Abstrakt
In this chapter I propose a new methodological tool for analyzing social and communicative phenomena that I call "a deictic perspective". Deploying this perspective, the chapter explores various ways in which the notions of "us" has been formed by, and transformed in, the most salient parts of discourse - slogans used in public rallies in two Central European countries in two different times.
In late 1989 the West was the much desired Other for many citizens of Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic; at the turn of 2014 and 2015, the West frequently became a rhetoric means by which to protect "us" against the undesired Other, i.e. the (often Muslim) migrants coming from non-European territories - the East and the South. The once cheerful we-want-to-be-part-of-the-West attitude has been, by some people at least, transformed into a much less cheerful we-don't-want-others-to-be-part-of-the-West.
Based on samples of public discourse from Germany and Czech Republic, I argue that the deictic perspective suits to comparing the fine interplay among time, space and identity. The chapter concludes by emphasizing both similarities and differences in public "we" across time and space within Central Europe, thus documenting the changing - and yet to a certain degree stable - sense(s) of belonging to the West.