"Temporal structures, representing the past in its relation to the present and the future, manifest deep connections between time, meaning, and agency. The representation of the past is realized at the intersection of the temporal, the cultural, and the political. However, in our study, correspondences between cyclical, linear, and timeless models of the past and conventional cultural dichotomies between the East and the West are not transferred to socio-political contexts in a consistent way. As the consideration of time, culture, and politics are conditioned by specific socio-cultural settings, the characteristics of these components are often mismatched with one another due to the peculiarities of agency and meaning. All in all, this mismatch hints both at the turn in the experience with modernity, which has tresspassed the East-West dichotomy and the reflection of the socio-political crisis in Turkey in news discourse at the temporal level. Here we should underline that the mismatch is not restricted to Turkey’s contextual dynamics but it should be read in terms of late modern times, where the cyclical and chronological patterns appear simultaneously in the news coverage: the former works through the emphasis on the nowness of the event at hand, while the latter is functional in a selective reading of the background to event. Thus the temporal crisis can be considered in terms of the fallen present of late modern societies. A dialectical reading of the fallen present tempts one to conclude with the possibility of a counter temporal pattern, based on subject’s potential for performativity filling in the blanks in the now(s) of the event(s) through history that evolves in her/his political present/presence (Honkanen, 2007)."
CONSTRUCTING THE PAST THROUGH THE PRESENT IN NEWS DISCOURSE: THE CASE OF SOMA1
Tatiana Mozhaeva*
Simten Coşar**
Abstract
Human experience claim limitlessness due to the temporal extension beyond the lifetime. Our extension to the past, the present, and the future is crucial for establishing meaningful connections among temporality, memory and representation. At the same time, representation of time and construction of memory are challenged by the complexity of global time, which fails to correspond to linear causality and positivist methodology. Considering these complications, this article focuses on two primary tasks. First, it considers different ways to conceptualize the past as a dimension of time in the context of social studies of temporality. Second, it investigates the construction of the past in news discourse in Turkey. Exposing connections between the temporality of the past and the construction of meaning in a specific socio-cultural context, our analysis attempts to connect temporality, culture, and politics.
Key terms
Social time, temporality of news discourse, linear past, cyclical past, timeless past.
HABER SÖYLEMİNDE GEÇMİŞİ BUGÜNDEN KURMAK: SOMA ÖRNEĞİ
Özet
İnsan tecrübesi yaşam süresinin ötesine geçtiği ölçüde sınırsızlığa işaret eder. Geçmişe, bugüne ve geleceğe salınımımız zamansallık, bellek ve temsil arasında anlamlı bağlantılar kurabilmek açısından önemlidir. Öte yandan, doğrusal nedenselliğe ve pozitivist metodolojiye uygun bir şekilde işlemeyen küresel zamanın karmaşıklığı, zamanın temsilini ve belleğin kurulumunu izlemeyi zorlaştırır. Bu çalışmada, farklı zamansallıkların yarattığı karmaşanın çözümlenmesine yönelik bir adım mahiyetinde, geçmişin kurulumuna odaklanıyoruz. İlk olarak, zamansallığa toplumsal perspektiften yaklaşan analizlerde farklı geçmiş kavramsallaştırmalarını ele alıyoruz. Ardından, Türkiye’de gazete haberlerinde geçmişin inşasına bakıyoruz. Özgül bir sosyo-politik bağlamda geçmişin zamansallığı ve anlamın kurulması arasındaki bağıntılara odaklanarak zamansallık, kültür ve siyaset arasındaki bağlantıyı açığa çıkarmayı amaçlıyoruz.
Anahtar Terimler
Toplumsal zaman, haberdeki söylemin zamansallığı, doğrusal geçmiş, döngüsel geçmiş, zamansız geçmiş.
Introduction
The multi-faceted and ubiquitous nature of time results in a high degree of temporal complexity with regard to conceptualizing social time and its representation in discourse. As a way to bypass this complexity, Adam (1990, 1995, 1998, 2004a, 2004b), Baert (1992), Bergmann (1992), Elias (1992), Greenhouse (1996), Nowotny (1994), Urry (2000), and other social scholars propose cautious treatment of generalizations concerning time and an extensive and intensive empirical orientation of temporal research. Considering these complications, this article takes issue with the conceptualization and construction of the past in news discourse with a view to the concept of memory. In so doing, we offer a brief account of the socio-political implications of temporality on the basis of the theorization of linear, cyclical, and timeless pasts as geometrical models. In this account we especially emphasize the way modern times are conceptualized-cum-experienced (and vice-a-versa) through the connections among life, death and memory. At the same time, correspondences are drawn between the temporal models and their conceptualization in terms of cultural distinctions between the East and the West. The discursive level of analysis, corresponding to the methodological requirement of contextualizing temporal research, involves investigation of the construction of the past in news discourse. In order to follow intricate temporal distortions and to relate them to the geometrical models of time and their cultural and political implications, the news articles on the mine explosion in Soma, Turkey, in May 2014 are selected with a view to the political stances
of Turkish newspapers. Correspondingly, the objective of this article can be defined as the investigation of connections among the temporal, the political, and the cultural aspects of the construction of the past in the present, in a specific political and cultural context. In the course of this investigation, social implications of potential correspondences and inconsistencies between the conceptual and the discursive levels of analysis of the past are also considered. The main argument of the study is that in the current stage of modernity in Turkey, the discursive extensions of socio-political dynamics imply a state of flux in temporality pointing at the risk of the colonization of the present-past and past-present by the “fallen present”.2 Yet at the same time, we also reserve the dialectics inherent in the mode of fallen present—i.e., the niches that the corresponding temporal pattern contains, which, in turn, bear possibilities for a counter pattern. We pursue this argument in three main parts. In the first part, we offer a brief account of theorizations on time. The second part of the article is reserved for data analysis, where we try to capture the basics of temporality as reflected in the (re)present(ation) and/or re-construction of the Soma mine explosion as an event by selected newspapers. In the third and concluding part we relate the basic findings of the analysis to the socio-political dimensions of temporality.
full text (PDF)
http://www.momentdergi.org/index.php/momentdergi/article/view/56/59
