When understanding becomes an insult — to the question of semantics and the role of the neologism “Putinversteher” in the political media discourse

Abstract

The study is devoted to the political neologism “Putinversteher”. A comprehensive analysis of the language material was carried out: in addition to content analysis, the work contains wordformation, stylistic and semantic types of analysis of neologism based on media publications from the end of 2013 to 2018. In order to double-check and complete the data, in addition to the archival materials of the publications, corpora of news texts were used, primarily the Leipzig Corpora Collection and the corpora of the digital dictionary of the German language (Korpora im DWDS). The chronological framework of the study is determined by the historical and political context and the maximum frequency of mentions of the word and its derivatives in this time period. The selection of sources was carried out on the basis of the principles of media relevance in the system of the mass press and the number of mentions of the word. As part of the semantic analysis, the cognitive and pragmatic components of the meaning of the lexeme “Putinversteher” were determined and the interpretative field of the concept “understanding” was characterized. The study showed that the neologism “Putinversteher” is found mainly in the artistic and journalistic and analytical genres of journalism. The nominative function of the lexeme “Putinversteher” is complemented by significative, evaluative and expressive functions, which allows us to consider neologism as a metaphorical frame that conceptualizes a certain political vision. The use of neologism in a media text serves not only to enhance the expressiveness of the text, but also is a tool for shaping public opinion, when complex socio-political processes are “compressed” to a pre-established judgment, fixed in the meaning of the newly formed word. An inevitable consequence of the widespread use of such neologisms is the simplification of complex political phenomena, the creation and consolidation of certain stereotypes (frames) in relation to socio-political actors and the establishment of a legitimate ideology.