DISCORPS CEEX Project - Human Resources - PostDoc - Module II PD-17 / Contract 1542 / 07.04.2006

Financed by Ministry of Education and Research, ROMANIA

24 months:  October 2006 - March 2008

Romanian

Discourse and Communication in the Romanian Public Space: Reflections of Values, Institutions, Language, Culture, History

Project Summary and Purpose

Project Objectives

Team Members - Postdoc Researchers

Team Members' Publications

Team Members' Documentation and Research Mobilities

Project Summary and Purpose

DISCORPS has as a main goal to provide a description and analysis of an important number of instances of discourse in the Romanian Public Space (RPS). The main concern of the project is to provide insights to the way in which discourse in RPS can contribute (role, significance, means and effects) to public understanding and awareness of European challenges and contemporary needs. Methodological assumption at the basis of the project: the descriptive, the analytic, the comparative and the normative approaches to discourse and communication in the Public Space can be combined to yield a complex view on the steps to be taken towards European integration from the perspective of shared understanding and respect for Europe's diversities (Otherness) and commonalities (Sameness). DISCORPS originality: the idea that value-specific, institutional, linguistic, cultural and historical aspects are of prime importance in the structure of discourse evolving in the Public Space; these are reflective of national and individual identities illustrated by the concepts of Otherness and Sameness. DISCORPS employs 5 postdoctoral students with research responsibilities over 24 months. The work is linked to similar research carried on nationally and internationally and is part of the research programme of the two departments involved in the project.

Project Objectives

1. Delimitation and definition of concepts: insights to theoretical approaches to communication and discourse and to research methodology in Social Sciences and Humanities 

2. Definition of 'Public Space' (Integrating project research into the social and academic environment; cooperation with actors in the public space)

3. Communication in the Public Space: Private Versus Public Space

 4. Description and analysis of Public Space discourse specimens

5. The place of values, institutions, language, culture, and history in the Public Space discourse

6. Reflections of Value-specific, Institutional, Linguistic, Cultural, and Historical aspects in the Romanian Public Space

7. Normative insights to discourse in the Public Space

Team Members - Postdoc Researchers

Team Members' Publications  

CORDONEANU, Ion (2007). Valorile democratice şi susţinerea lor publică în rândul intelectualilor. In Anca Gâţă & Adela Drăgan (Eds), Communication and Argumentation in the Public Sphere, Proceedings of the First Conference, “Public Space versus Private Space”, Volume I, Issue 3: 524-529. Galaţi: Galati University Press. ISSN: 1843-7893

GANEA, Alina Elena (2007). Coopération et conflit dans l’espace public. Une analyse des faces dans le talk show au sujet du film Trianon. In Anca Gâţă & Adela Drăgan (Eds), Communication and Argumentation in the Public Sphere, Proceedings of the First Conference, “Public Space versus Private Space”, Volume I, Issue 1: 36-43. Galaţi: Galati University Press. ISSN: 1843-7893

POPA,  Diana Elena (2007). Affective vs Cognitive Dimensions of the Cultural Public Sphere. In Anca Gâţă & Adela Drăgan (Eds), Communication and Argumentation in the Public Sphere, Proceedings of the First Conference, “Public Space versus Private Space”, Volume I, Issue 1: 5-13. Galaţi: Galati University Press. ISSN: 1843-7893

VELICĂ, Marius (2007). Public versus private: indicators of ad hominem fallacies. In Anca Gâţă & Adela Drăgan (Eds), Communication and Argumentation in the Public Sphere, Proceedings of the First Conference, “Public Space versus Private Space”, Volume I, Issue 1: 88-92. Galaţi: Galati University Press. ISSN: 1843-7893

Team Members' Documentation and Research Mobilities

Religion and modernity in the Romanian public space (In search of an explanatory theoretical model)

Some analysts among those who study the phenomena of secularization and laicization question the explanatory ability or the comprehensive force of the categories “laicization” and “secularization” (although they do not contest their descriptive pertinence). The main argument is that these notions do not cover the essence of the phenomenon which represents the originality of our world. The basic phenomenon (described as “the overturn of a situation implying a global and explicit domination of the religious towards a situation which could be described as a secondization and a privatization”) is put in relation with another typical phenomenon of our political modernity – the dissociation between the civil society and the state. The institutional order and the formal rules of living in a society are considered natural results of the citizens’ deliberation and will, citizens who express themselves starting from the recognized premise that the political order is not conditioned by religion and does not exceed in time or in the value the citizens’ will, whose beliefs are essentially private. Even more, this political order authorizes the coexistence of a plurality of legitimate purposes. In this sense, there is at least a separation of principles between the political and religious factors and the need for the religious neutrality of the state. In this context, it becomes an absolute necessity to redefine the basic notions which designate this phenomenon (considered as a turning point in the European culture) called “the unchurching of Europe”. Nowadays, religion has lost its capacity to model behaviours. In a period in which we are witnessing the restructuring of the relations between the public and the private spaces, the method of redefining the concepts “secularization” and “laicization” can be applied, as well, to post-1989 Romanian realities, with the aim of better understanding the reactions of a society in full process of democratization. A possible explanatory model for these reactions should not forget the fact that modernity has been a historical problem of the Catholic-Protestant tradition, and not of the Orthodox one. In the contemporary world, the genuine and unique problem of Orthodoxy, as a religious and institutional formula, is given by the fact that modernity is not a natural product of its own tradition. And the distortions in reactions (not only from institutional Orthodoxy, but also of a large of the Romanian society) can be understood if we have in mind the desire to preserve a traditional symbolic power in the Romanian culture and public space.

“Dialogue and Communication in Science” Workshops

Discusions, conclusions: Although the problems of values in the public space have a primarily social and humanistic nature, the problem of communication in the public space of the values of academic research represents an issue of interest for all fields of university research, the resulting conclusion pleading for the importance of redefining – within the context of the project – the concept of intellectual value. The expression of the major problems of existence in the public space should be oriented mainly towards the discursive functions of informative, narrative and argumentative nature combining at the same time the rethorical and dialectical aspects.

Projects		Publications	Research Seminars		Conferences