Publications

Realism- and geopolitics-inspired rhetoric was common currency in Russian foreign policy discourse throughout the 1990s. This led some commentators to adopt realism and geopolitics - realism’s more nationalist and strategic counterpart - as conceptual lenses for understanding Russian foreign policy. As a result, Russian foreign policy of the 2010s is still considered predominantly geopolitics-driven despite the fact that geopolitical vocabulary has virtually disappeared from foreign policy discourse while a desire to carve out spheres of influence have been officially pronounced utterly anachronistic and inappropriate, a “thing of the past”. Thus, a more nuanced interpretation views the rise of geopolitics in Russian post-Soviet foreign policy discourse as an attempt to tap into the symbolic and rhetorical power of geopolitics in order to reduce ontological insecurity brought about by the end of the Cold War. The chapter, therefore, advances a theoretical claim about the relevance of the constructivist and poststructuralist literature and very limited relevance of realism for understanding the twists and turns of Russian post-Soviet foreign policy. Methodologically, the chapter argues that an exploration of state identity rooted in the ontological security argument will benefit from employing discourse analysis. Empirically, the present study provides substantiation of the theoretical claim that the concept of hegemony captures well the historical trajectory of Russia’s relations with its ‘significant other’- Europe/the EU/the West – and provides important insights into the sources of Russia’s ontological insecurity in the 21st century.

The article presents an empirical study conducted on the material of the Russian language segment of Change.org in the theoretical field of digital political participation and in the case of slacktivism to clarify e-petitions contribution to changes in public life. The purpose of the study is to present thematic dominants in federal districts at the levels of petitioning and support by online voting.

22452 Change.org petitions from 2012 to 2017 were extracted and analysed with the Python software (Lxml, Requests and Re libraries). The territory of their creation was marked as well. 918 petitions identified by the author as ‘executed’ were taken for the analysis by region. Both text databases underwent the open coding technique using the AntConc and TopicMiner software and descriptive statistics tools, i.e. cluster analysis (SPSS Statistics 22).

As a result, three groups of territories were identified. In the first group, the government and business are ready to solve a wide range of issues in the region and they are responding to the requests; in the second group, they respond only to the survival problems; in the third group of territories, they feel the safest, helping animals and ignoring other demands.

The study suggests ‘an offline effect’ of online petitions where the themes are an integrative indicator: they reflect the needs of the population of a given territory, indicate the recognition of the problem as worth solving and show what problems the regional authorities or business are ready to tackle without significant public pressure.

The paper deals with the use of precedent phenomena for the purpose of creating the “friend / foe” opposition in the discourse of Aleksey Navalny’s blog. It is revealed that various (Russian and foreign) source spheres of precedence are used in the electronic diary. Foreign precedent phenomena are predominantly used to conceptualise the “friend” circle.  

The presented research is devoted to the issues related to the ambiguous attitude towards women's participation in politics. The relevance of the study is explained by underrepresentation of women in the decision-making sphere. The presidential elections in the United States (2016) and Russia (2018), where women were registered as candidates, served as a newsbreak for discussing this issue in the media and social networks. The authors aimed at creating a stereotypical portrait of a female politician, constructed with the help of various linguistic means. The material for the study constituted the entries of the microblog Twitter, published in the period from January 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018, and selected by the keywords «female candidate», «female politician» and «female president». In their work the authors relied on the theory and methodology of social constructivism, and as the main methods of research were used the methods of computer linguistics, as well as qualitative content analysis of messages. The study revealed that the image of a female-politician is constructed by the users of Twitter with the help of four groups of linguistic means, namely stylistic, lexico-semantic, syntactic and grapho-stylistic. Stylistic means are the most numerous group, marking, on the one hand, appearance, education, goodwill, and on the other — incompetence, poor upbringing and other qualities of female politicians. Semantic spheres mark the social roles of women politicians: bloggers discuss the problem of women's representation in the highest echelons of power throughout the world, the combination of political career and family, self-realization in other spheres of public life, etc. The stereotypical portrait based on the data obtained emphasizes the users' attitude to women's participation in politics as controversial, combining traditional gender stereotypes and new egalitarian trends.

The topicality of the research is explained by the growing popularity of social networks as a channel of political communication. Modern elements of intertextuality, such as hashtags, retweets, @ sign, ensure participation of a large number of users in the discussion of certain political topics, and allow to quickly track public's reaction to political events. Employing the methods of computer linguistics, the paper analyzes the elements of intertextuality implemented on Twitter as reaction of users of the English-language segment to the introduction of the US President Decree No. 13769, known in the media space as "travel ban". The study found that the most popular element of intertextuality is the hashtag, which is actively used by users to popularize the opinion and involve a wide range of people into discussion. In addition, thematic grouping of hashtags allowed us to identify the opposite reactions of users, and to assume that it is possible to control the route of the debate with the help of hashtags. To attract attention of the maximum number of users, hashtags must also be single-component and act as the subject, marking the topic of the message.

The article is devoted to lyubopytstvo ‘curiosity’ as a language-specific word in order to show its specific conceptual configuration in the Russian language consciousness. In this regard, the National Russian Corpus is more appropriate, because a conceptual configuration of an analyzed concept is not present in a “finished” form in any single utterance, but may be reconstructed only on the totality of all possible utterances. It can be manifested in many different ways: distribution, ability to accumulate some Russian “key ideas”, predisposition to be associated with some emotional attitudes, concepts, propositional and metaphorical models. According to the National Russian Corpus, curiosity is usually felt for everything which may be of interest, and defies the imagination: another man’s life, news and policy, death, abroad and foreigners, origins and workings of the universe, friends’ husband’s salary, danger and suspense, someone’s life stories, scientific discoveries, etc. In different contexts, curiosity is defined in relation to interest, surprise, excitement, hope, desire, idleness, sin, etc., that allow us to reconstruct some conventional situations of curiosity, as well as related feelings, acts, opinions and axiological norms, in conformity with different “conceptual schemas” of curiosity as a cognitive interest, boredom, idleness, or sin. The propositional model provides information that predicates applied to lyubopytstvo ‘curiosity’ vary with the position in the syntactic structure of the proposition. As a semantic object curiosity is felt, constrained, excited, masked, and satisfied; as a semantic subject it appears, covers, grows, and encourages. In the metaphoric mapping, lyubopytstvo ‘curiosity’ is redefined over categorical boundaries in terms of a propositional model appropriated for an inner voice, a human being, a living creature, an inevitable force, or a flammable mixture. By analogy with an inner voice it calls, tells and counsels; by analogy with a living creature it is waking up, brings out; by analogy with the beast it gnaws and bites; by analogy with an inevitable force it covers, overcomes, leads and wins; by analogy with a peculiarly flammable mixture it inflames and burns. Such use becomes so common that native speakers don’t pay more attention to metaphorical expressions like curiosity killed someone or to burn and consume oneself in curiosity but take them almost for the authentic characteristic of curiosity.

The article explores a sense of duty as a language-specific concept in the Russian language conscience. In this regard, the National Russian Corpus is more appropriate because a conceptual configuration of an analyzed concept is not present in “finished” form in any single utterance but may be reconstructed only on the totality of all possible utterances. The specific conceptual configuration is manifested in many ways: distribution, ability to accumulate some Russian “key ideas”, predisposition to be associated with some emotional attitudes, propositional and metaphorical models. According to the National Russian Corpus, a sense of duty is defined, in different contexts, in relation to human responsibilities such service and work; related concepts such responsibility, conscience, dignity and honor; related emotions and feelings such pride, joy, celebration, obedience, fear and guilt. The propositional model, built on the National Russian Corpus, includes information that predicates applied to duty vary with the position in the syntactic structure of the proposition. As a semantic object duty is felt, carried, carried out, executed, violated, transgressed, known, remembered and forgotten. As a semantic subject duty is redefined over the categorical boundaries in terms of propositional models appropriated for an inner voice, human being, breaking load, or power. Keywords: Russian language, language picture of the world, corpus analysis, language-specific words, propositional model, conceptual metaphor, social conventions.

 Political humor in the US late night comedy shows is considered in the paper.

The article discusses the importance of the ideological factor in national policies and military doctrines of States. The conclusion is that the ideological basis of foreign and military policy of Russia is still only at the stage of formation.