paint on the side of tanks and colour on the shirt of Russian gymnastIvan Kuliak , the missive Z has do to stand for support for Russia ’s intrusion ofUkraine . It has even been incorporated into the spelling of place names such as КуZбасс in south key Russia .
In some state , the Czech Republic for case , there are even discussions about whether display the missive should be acriminal offence . Its boost comes curtly after another lesser - used varsity letter from the Latin alphabet — Q — became a part of far - right political sympathies in the U.S.(and abroad)through the conspiracy theoryQAnon .
The use of symbol is a fundamental part of any political difference — part of the propaganda strategy that tries toshape the public narrative . But what is most interesting is how these efficient symbol emerge , and that some of them resonate so powerfully that they end up banned as a chassis of hatred speech .
The war for public opinion that runs alongside the real war in Ukraine has given rise to a host of symbol play backup for one side or the other . Twitter is full of people add together the Ukrainian pin emoji to their name . The defiant words of the Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island — " Russian war vessel , go * * * * yourself ! " — have become a powerfulunderdog shibboleth , and even the basis for an official Ukrainian postage stamp stamp .
On the other side , the most notable symbol has been the round-eyed Z. There have beenmany theoriesabout why this missive has become a pro - war symbol , and what its origination might be . Is it because it symbolise the Russian word for west ( zapad ) , the direction in which Putin ’s tanks are rolling ? Or is it shorthand forZa pobedu — " for triumph " ? There is also the oddity that the Cyrillic alphabet does n’t have a sign resemble Z. The zee sound is write as З.
Giving Letters Meaning
The circumstances of a symbol ’s origin are only a minor part of its story . It ’s the way symbolisation come to resonate in society , and how citizenry levy import on them , which transform arbitrary signs into brawny instruments of propaganda .
Political symbolic representation can take somewhat much any variety you’re able to think . In 2013,penguinsbecame the symbol of anti - government protesters in Istanbul . When violent clangoring between police and dissident first soften out , all the national television channel chose not to cover them . CNN Türk alternatively function a documentary film about penguin — which protesters then adopted as an allegory for their conflict , and to mock the broadcaster .
The use of letters of the first rudiment as political symbols is a little unusual for the uncomplicated reason that individual letters are n’t intend to have any intrinsic significance of their own . They ’re supposed merely to represent sounds which , when combined , bring on words which only then have a significance .
When theNATO phonetic alphabet(Alfa , Bravo , Charlie and so on ) was being break , one of the criteria for watchword used to represent letter of the alphabet was that they should " be free from any tie withobjectionable meaning . “They should be politically and culturally neutral , in the same way the letter of the alphabet themselves are .
The disinterest of alphabetical letters was also behind the World Health Organization ’s conclusion to use Hellenic missive to designate raw COVID variants . Before this , the variate had been make consort to their place of parentage , but this risked stigmatise locations or countries by having them constantly associated with the computer virus . Even then , certain lettershad to be miss in display case they accidentally led to unwanted associations . The Greek alphabetic character Xi , for example , wasskippedas it resembles the surname of the president of China , Xi Jinping .
What this shows is that language is always potentially political , precisely because it ’s at the heart of how humans interact — and human fundamental interaction itself is always , at some tier , political . Words and symbolic representation have a denotative meaning — their literal " dictionary definition " — but they also dribble traces of the history of their role , which colour in the connotations they have for people .
It ’s not surprising that the two late example of alphabetical letters as political symbols have take on the two least used of all the letters . Z has traditionally been watch as superfluous in English — so much so that Shakespeare made it the cornerstone of an abuse in King Lear : " Thou whoreson zed ! Thou unnecessary letter ! " And Q has associations with words such as query and query . So neither was a wholly white canvass before their use was co - opted .
in the end , however , it ’s the way that signs are in reality used that translate them into symbols . It ’s a matter of who they ’re used by , for what purpose . Once this usage begin to spread through order and is adopted by help , highlight and debated by the medium — and , in some causa , banish — its meaning cursorily gets embed in the culture . Eventually , it becomes part of the casual mental lexicon we expend to make sensory faculty of the world .
Philip Seargeantis a senior lecturer in apply philology at The Open University in Milton Keynes , England .
The Open Universityprovides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK .
This article is republish fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license . you could find theoriginal articlehere .
