SMALL STORIES OF BREXIT IN COMMENTS TO POSTS ON THE SOCIAL NETWORK "FACEBOOK"

Abstract

Research into small stories, which is becoming increasingly popular with digital narratologists, has a significant explanatory potential for sociologists and psychologists. This study belongs to the new paradigm of narratological investigations, which is the evidence of its timeliness, enhanced by the social significance of Britain's withdrawal from the European Union. The object matter of the study are small stories of Brexit in the Ukrainian segment of the social network "Facebook", its subject matter being the ways and means of storytelling, indications of the place and time of the story and the participants in the storytelling situation. The aim of the analysis is to examine small stories about Brexit according to these parameters. The analysis proposed in this article is based on the method of A. Georgakopoulou, which consists of three distinguishable and interconnected levels of analysis: 1) ways of telling, 2) sites, 3) tellers. The research methods used here are discursive and contextual analysis. The objectives of the work are: first, to identify verbal and non-verbal means used in small stories about Brexit; second, to determine how the place and time of the story are actualized, and third, to determine what linguistic means are used to actualize tellers. The sample includes 78 small stories of Brexit, which have been obtained by continuous selection from the Ukrainian segment of the social network "Facebook" in 20162021. Small stories of Brexit in the Ukrainian segment of the social network "Facebook" are characterized by a variety of verbal and semiotic means, management of interaction during the story, intertextual links to precedent texts and situations. The most common genre of small stories of Brexit is breaking news, although this subgenre can hybridize by combining breaking news with projections. We see the prospects for further research in the study of the narrator's stance towards Brexit.