HUMOUROUS DISCOURSE OF THE WARTIME PERIOD IN UKRAINE

Abstract

Introduction. An important phenomenon of Ukrainian wartime culture is the development of humorous discourse which testifies to Ukrainians’ resilience in the face of armed
aggression and threat to life. There has been a notable rise of humorous culture which serves as a means of psychological resistance to aggression.
Purpose. The present study offers an integrative analysis of the discursive mechanisms of Ukrainian war-related humorous communication.
Methods. The study uses the methods of componential, distributive, contextological and interpretive analysis, as well as the semasiological procedure of field modelling.
Results. The study explicates the role of wartime neolexemes, word play, contextual relationships between lexical and semantic elements of different styles as well as occasional word connections in humorous communication. It also reveals how common and proper nouns are used to create a humorous effect. Finally, the study outlines the role of intertextual elements, self-irony, parody, and sarcasm.ine. It reveals the structure and function of verbal war-related memes as well as their ascendance to the status of linguoculturemes. The author identifies the role of precedent phenomena as well as sociocultural, ideological and psychological context in the realisation of the axiological, worldview and identification strategies of humorous communication.
Conclusion. The humorous discourse of the wartime period is formed primarily by resources of the basic and intermediate linguistic levels: lexical and semantic, word construction, and semantic and syntactic. Due to their spread, functions, paradigmatic and syntagmatic connections verbal trends of the wartime period have turned into linguoculturemes which contain important information about war events and influence the public opinion. They rely on the sociocultural, ideological and psychological contexts of mass communication. As a result, they form the worldview, axiological, psychological as well as identification communicative strategies.