PUBLICISTIC REPERTOIRE OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS (civil war in Ukraine in Russian mass media)

Abstract

Civil war inUkrainecalled forth the appearance of new means in the repertoire of publicistic means in Russian mass media. These means present new realia brought about by the “orange revolution” in the country that used to be friendly towardsRussiaonce. These means maintain ethical, social and civic propositions of conflicting social movements. They characterize new positioning of forces on the world arena. The object of the research is to analyze speech strategies and tactics used by the leaders of mass social movements and instigators of information war in conditions of turning political opposition into the outbreak of hostility. The paper evaluates the role of the mass media technology in stirring an international conflict to action; it determines main replenishment sources which “verbalize” discussion devoted toUkrainein publicistic repertoire of Russian mass media. The authors focus on the fact that Russian journalists in their sketches, editorials and reports use a lot of linguistic elements borrowed from the Russian-speaking community inUkraine. While creating new words and word combinations employing well-known foreign and native lexical units, journalists actively use words from the Ukrainian language. New meanings are usually formed through metaphor and metonymy. Derogatory names appear for realia on both sides of the armed conflict: e.g., names and nicknames of armed conflict participants: military leaders, political figures; military units, operations, weapons. The authors draw attention to the suggestive force of specific publicistic means: slogans, rallying cries and symbolic representations of conflicting groups. The research resulted in identification of specific usage of linguistic units that lead to escalation of the social and political conflict, and description of the linguistic means contributing to the peaceful resolution of the conflict.