Anti-Ukrainian Discourse of Russian Media: Elimination Via Manipulation
Anti-Ukrainian Discourse of Russian Media: Elimination Via Manipulation

Summary/Abstract: This article contains a multifaceted cognitive, pragmatic and verbal analysis of anti-Ukrainian discourse in the Russian media from the point of view of its eliminative features. The main argument is that the discourse-forming concepts of ‘Ukronatists’, ‘understate’ and the far peripheral concept of the ‘fraternal people’ underpins multilevel eliminative strategies and the manipulative techniques of their implementation. The article argues that the identified discourse-forming concepts correspond to the three types of the narrative modelling of events according to the scenarios ‘The Story of a Just War’ and ‘Fathers and Sons’, and based on the metaphors of ‘mental disorder’, ‘predatory, scientific abstraction’, ‘drugs/alcohol addiction’ and ‘a house for NATO’. These are used to conceptualise Ukraine and Ukraine-associated matters leading to the construction of eliminative strategies for denying Ukrainian national identity and statehood, polarisation, symbolisation based on group stigmatisation, extermination, explicit and implicit dehumanisation through animalisation, deindividualisation and impersonalisation, as well as delegitimisation and masking actions as counteraction and self-defence.

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