Самоидентификация жителей непризнанных Республик Донбасса: по материалам общения в Интернете

Abstract

The article describes the transformation of the Donbass population identity in the course of the current armed conflict. The subject of the research is the self-positioning of the unrecognized Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LDNR) residents, and its correlation with a number of categories marked with the pronouns we, ours, everyone and you. The structure reflects regional society the division into “friends and foes”, in accordance with the attitude of citizens to the conflict as a whole and its various aspects. The object of study is the Internet communication, dialogues and speech manifestations. Internet-resources affiliated with the LDNR make up the research source base, the main method of collecting information is monitoring and a continuous selection of language material by keywords. The work belongs to the sociolinguistic paradigm and embraces ethnolinguistic theory. In the course of the research the author found out that the leading theme of the self-consciousness transformation taking place in Donbass is the rejection of the Ukrainian national-political identity and the strengthening of the regional Donbass identity with the development of such a variant as Donetsk / Lugansk Russians. On a broad basis of the community of fellow countrymen united by cultural, linguistic and ideological priorities a group of “true” Donetsk residents is being formed. They have jointly experienced all the years of the tragedy of war on their land.