This study is concerned with political language. Specifically, it offers a structural comparison between conventional Soviet political rhetoric, exemplified by the discourse of K. U. Chernenko, and the novel form of political speech associated with his successor, M. S. Gorbachev. Inasmuch as the conclusions drawn from the analysis have important implications for the question of change in the Soviet system, it is perhaps a good idea at the outset to mark off the limits of what this analysis entails, how it approaches the question of change itself, and what aspects of the phenomenon it can address with some confidence.

The method employed here is that of semiotics. For the moment, it will suffice to distinguish its particular focus from that of other Western specialists who have analyzed the Gorbachev leadership and the prospects for change in the USSR. In so doing, it is possible to show how in either case the method frames the object of inquiry in such a way as to place in foreground or background one or another feature of the social world, and shapes thereby our perceptions and the conclusions which we draw from them. It might be said in this respect that whereas conventional studies of the Gorbachev leadership analyze its language from the perspective of the policy statements that it might contain, the approach adopted here amounts to an analysis of the language itself.