The Image of Chelyabinsk in the 20th century British Media Discourse (1901-1950)

Abstract

The paper studies the evolution of the image of Chelyabinsk in the 20th century British media discourse. The research proves relevant as it involves both linguistic and historical analyses; it aims at retrospective study of the evolution of the image of the foreign city in British media discourse over a large time span. A wide range of methods is employed in the study: comparative, diachronic, cognitive-matrix, cognitive-discursive methods, source study, and content analysis. The source of the data is a digitized archive of British historical media texts. The authors fixed nine variations of the city name. The frequency of modeling the image of Chelyabinsk is dissimilar: it is rather high at the beginning of the century, declines in the second decade, reaches its minimum in 1921-1930, and rises again in the subsequent decades, which is explained by the interest of the British media to industrialization and the events of World War II. Most of the newspapers and magazines that modelled the image of Chelyabinsk were published in the capitals and large industrial centres, which is explained by the peculiarities of British print media, a higher level of education of large cities residents, and Britains economic interests in Russia / the Soviet Union. The significant difference in the images of Chelyabinsk across the time is in their emotive load: negative images of the beginning of the century are contrasted to positive images generated in the latest time span.