WAR IN UKRAINE: HUMOR VS FEAR (COMMUNICATIVE AND PRAGMATIC ASPECT)

Abstract

The article presents material on the peculiarities of the linguistic representation of the fight against fears of war in the modern Ukrainian language (using the example of posts on the Facebook social network and other Internet sources). The following methods were used for the research: linguistic observation and description of linguistic phenomena, text decoding method, comparison, analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, continuous sampling method. The article traces the evolution of the discourse of fear in general and in the life of a modern Ukrainian in particular. The study describes the system of emotional and psychological images expressing war fears and verbal means of overcoming them. The main purpose of using humor turns out to devalue fears, so the fears themselves and the negative characters associated with them are depicted in comical, uncomfortable situations. It has been proven that the means of humor in its most diverse manifestations (irony, satire, trolling, banter) permeate all resources of Ukrainian language thinking: dictionary, grammar, orthographic means, quotation thesaurus, linguistic and sociocultural stereotypes, language. norms and registers of speech. From a communicative and pragmatic point of view, images of putin, the aggressor country of russia, russian invaders, etc., were analyzed. It was established that some names form semantic microsystems and branched synonymous series (stereotypical names of russia, russians, and putin himself). As the analysis showed, a significant number of new creations, obscene and euphemistic vocabulary perform primarily protective (health-preserving), evaluative-reflective and integrative (socially unifying) functions, since they are primarily intended to calm, encourage Ukrainians and maintain at least a relative mental balance and at the same time help to sort out feelings, condemn the enemy and brace up to keep struggling on the way to victory. The study of the mechanisms of dispelling fear and means of overcoming it in the modern Ukrainian language have contributed to the knowledge of the connection between the people's worldview and their language and the national linguistic picture of the world.