Sergei Kruk | Riga Stradins University (original) (raw)

Papers by Sergei Kruk

Letonica, 2024

A factor analysis of the corpus of Latvian legal documents issued during 1990–2022 reveals an inc... more A factor analysis of the corpus of Latvian legal documents
issued during 1990–2022 reveals an increase of the use of ambiguous grammatical
forms that obscure the regulatory enactments. Designating actions and their effects
by indeclinable participles and verbs in conditional mood, the lawmaker does not
attest to causality between the proposed procedure and the result sought, and does
not acknowledge their intention to implement the procedure. The indicative mood
and the infinitive forms designate actions and their effects explicitly, but their
frequency tends to decrease. The frequency of usage of passive voice, debitive mood,
and reflexive verbs demonstrates an upward trend; however, assessing the ambiguity
of these grammatical forms requires a qualitative analysis of legal documents.

Zariņš, T., A. Muraško (ed.) (2023) "Juris Poišs, 1957-1983." Rīga: Kultkom., 2023

The paper analyses content and form of Soviet Latvian press photography in 1970-1985.

Journal of Baltic Studies, 2011

Punctum. International Journal of Semiotics, 2019

Contributions to Baltic-Slavonic Relations in Literature and Languages, 2022

The Soviet Union changed the ethnic composition of Latvia’s population, and as a consequence, Lat... more The Soviet Union changed the ethnic composition of Latvia’s population, and as a consequence, Latvian was losing its position in many spheres of public communication. To raise
the profile of Latvian, scholars and policymakers have promoted a policy of coercive linguistic integration since the 1990s. Besides the communicative function, this political concept attributes the function of social cohesion to language. This function has not been exposed in academic literature. Contextual analysis of propositions about linguistic integration reveals a legacy of Romantic notions on language maintenance as if a shared language
would consolidate individuals into a nation. Proponents of linguistic integration assumed
that individuals were not cooperative beings, and for the sake of social cohesion, had to
follow a mandatory monolinguistic norm, which enables the nationwide transmission of
thoughts; a common language delimited ethnic boundaries and conveyed the favoured
ethnic group’s worldview, which is fixed in and mediated by texts. Linguistic integration is
expected to provide the inclusion of other ethnicities. Nevertheless, the scholars fail to
distinguish language from ethnicity, which remains a salient tool of ethnic categorisation.
Beliefs in social homogeneity and language as being a strong and transparent semiotic
code underpin the concept of linguistic integration.

Semiotica, 2022

Neuroscience has established several brain pathways that process visual information. Distinct neu... more Neuroscience has established several brain pathways that process visual information. Distinct neural circuits analyze body appearance and movement providing information about the person's cognitive and emotional states. The activity of the pathways depends on the salience of visual stimuli for the organism in the given circumstances. Since ballet performances are not among the crucial events for the viewer's organism, not all viewers perceive and interpret bodily signs that express the mental state of the dancer. Treatment of the dancer as close other activates the neural circuits that elaborate emotions, this enables the viewer to feel the internal state of the dancer and enrich the interpretation of the scenic action.

In Latvia outdoor sculpture functions as a medium of political communication. Transformations of ... more In Latvia outdoor sculpture functions as a medium of political communication. Transformations of political regime engendered the alteration of representation politics aimed at attesting the new power relations. Not always the authorities can topple down a monument and erect a new one to propagate an unambiguous political message. More subtle methods are exploited to depreciate the unwanted sculptures and to break in the public sphere with new political messages. This paper conceptualises the peculiarities of this kind of political communication in semiotic terms. Among the most popular practices are renaming of monuments, change or addition of inscriptions, circulation of new explanations, permitting of natural decay and banal vandalism, modification of environment around the sculpture, and its inclusion in rituals. Outdoor sculpture as a medium of political communication Latvia has experienced several waves of erection and destruction of monuments in the 20th century. The change of...

Latvijas Zinātņu Akadēmijas Vēstis, 2021

Statistical analysis of the national representative surveys attests at a higher level of solidari... more Statistical analysis of the national representative surveys attests at a higher level of solidarity and civic activism among private business owners and respondents intending to launch a private business. Latvian policy planning documents covering business problem issues ignore value orientations and opinion of these socio-economic groups.

Akadēmiskā Dzīve, 2020

This paper analyses the National Development Plan for Latvia, 2021-2027.

Punctum, 2019

By and large visual semiotics still misses a comprehensive method for the analysis of sculpture. ... more By and large visual semiotics still misses a comprehensive method for the analysis of sculpture. The paper demonstrates that sculptures have a peculiar plastic sign-the mass. Intrinsic to three-dimensional objects, the mass determines the forces of gravity and inertia possessing a potential to suggest connotations of the artwork. Taking as examples the large monuments built in Soviet Latvia in 1960-1990, the paper distinguishes among three categories of monuments-static, dynamic and ambiguous-which owe their particular characteristics to diverse exposure of the mass enabled by various constructive techniques. As iconic signs these monuments represent actual identities and events while the exposed mass, as a plastic sign, conveys additional connotations like stability, change, motion, standstill, slowness, speed enabling a more nuanced interpretation of the represented persons and events. As a physical property of objects mass can be evaluated by handling them directly but the public is supposed to look at sculpture not to touch and handle it. The current psychology of perception holds however that the perceiver goes beyond the information given in the visual input, the process of perception depends also on the perceiver's knowledge and purposes in the contact with reality. Ubiquity of outdoor sculpture suggests that our accumulated experience of 3D artistic objects can be embedded into the elaboration of the visual input thus the viewers can perceive the mass and enrich the interpretation of sculpture considering the meanings of this plastic sign. Semiotics of three-dimensional artwork More than a century ago sculptor and pioneer of the formal analysis of visual art Adolf Hildebrand ([1893]1914: 68-69) wrote that sculpture originated from drawing as it was turned into relief. Sculptors start carving the stone keeping in mind only one view from one particular Punctum, 5(2): 91-118, 2019

Mūzikas Akadēmijas raksti, 2019

Lituanus, 2018

The paper explores the reasons of low civic participation and weakness of public sphere in Latvia.

Akadēmiskā Dzīve, 2018

Applying quantitative and qualitative methods of content analysis to the national news flow in La... more Applying quantitative and qualitative
methods of content analysis to the national
news flow in Latvia, the researchers have found
a strong dependence of the media agenda on the
agenda set by public relations offices of government and big corporations. The top-down
information flow is structured and mediated by the largest news agency LETA. By comparing
LETA’s national news with press-releases, the
program WCopyfind has revealed that 43%
of the news stories include texts from these
press-releases. Two thirds (66%) of the remaining news stories represent one-sided opinions
from a single source of information, politicians being the most popular (36%) of sources used
by journalists.
Internet news portals rely mostly on LETA’s stories. Setting their own media agenda is
extremely rare. Only 4% of stories published
by Delfi.lv and TVnet.lv were not covered by
LETA. Only 2% of the stories produced by
journalists of Apollo.lv were original. Evening
newscasts of public television LTV and commercial LNT and TV3 also follow the agenda
compiled by LETA, which lists the upcoming
events organized by government and big corporations. Moreover, the qualitative analysis
demonstrates that journalists also reproduce their institutional frames of reference on problem issues.
Latvian audience evaluates the quality of
national news coverage negatively. In a representative opinion poll held in 2014, 59% of
the respondents agreed that the media ignored
public opinion (13% could not formulate an
answer). This research suggests that there are
weighty reasons for this critical attitude. We
argue that the growth of political populism
accompanied by a decreasing trust in quality
of media results from the lack of pluralism
in information sources and national news
agendas.