Sovereignonyms as new means to create the image of the aggressor state in the Ukrainian Internet communication

Abstract

The article examines the sovereignonyms of Russia as an aggressor state waging a brutal, but unprovoked, war against Ukraine recorded in modern online publications and social networks. The article substantiates the emergence of neosovereignonyms by the need of Internet communicators to name the state that conducts aggressive actions against Ukraine as accurately as possible, and to convey in these names the emotions caused by such actions. It is proved that the analyzed neosovereignonyms explain the defining characteristics of the Russian Federation today: formation of neo-totalitarianism; inconsistency of economic and military power with ambitions for world hegemony; absurdity, from the point of view of Ukrainians, of domestic and foreign policy; underdevelopment of civil society; lack of critical thinking even among the educated population; cult of cruelty, atrophy of empathy for Ukrainians among ordinary Russians; slavish obedience, inability of Russian society for mass anti-war protests. Most of the analyzed sovereignonyms have a clear negative evaluative color, thanks to which the emotions of the nominees, such as anger and contempt, are expressed explicitly or implicitly, which serves as an indicator of the attitude of the Ukrainian society towards the aggressor state.
According to the structure, the studied onyms can be simple one-word, complex one-word and multi-component ones. From the point of view of derivation, one-word sovereignonyms for the designation of the Russian Federation as an aggressor state were formed by a lexical-semantic method (onymization and transonymization), i.e., they are neosemants, and by morphological methods – compounding, affixation and abbreviation. From the point of view of structure, compound sovereignonyms are subjunctive noun-type phrases.