Representation of the image of Russia and Central Europe in the British press. The impact of media on intercultural communication in global context

Abstract

Research background: Twenty-first century’s sees strong globalization trends in which mass media play crucial role in shaping public opinion which might saliently impact intercultural communication on the international level.
Purpose of the article: This paper focuses on the representation of the image of Russia and Central and Eastern Europe in the British press and, besides, it sets out the role of stereotyping in intercultural communication. The article writers assume that the stereotypes play pivotal role in image shaping of a country in the media. Above all, the most efficient way to not stereotype is a straightforward communication of the participants alongside with the knowledge of the participant’s background, i. e. cultural knowledge.
Drawing on the information from the British press, Russia, Central as well as Eastern Europe appears not solely as a geographical region. On the contrary, despite the fast economic, social and political development, its image abroad is still predominantly negative.
Methods: The paper, in conjunction with the cultural linguistics and cognitive approach, reveals the range of metaphorical expressions, in particular cognitive aspect of metaphors used by British journalists, which, in turn form the image of Russia in the British press.
Findings & Value added: The paper suggests that the analysis of the image of country in the mass media might apply to the investigation of images of other countries as well as to comparative studies.

Full text

Representation of the image of Russia and Central
Europe in the British press. The impact of media on
intercultural communication in global context
Silvia Polakova 1
*
, Jozef Bruk3, and Lenka Môcova2
1 University of Zilina, Institute of Lifelong Learning, Univerzitna 1, 010 26 Zilina, Slovakia
2 University of Zilina, Institute of Lifelong Learning, Univerzitna 1, 010 26 Zilina, Slovakia
3 University of Zilina, Institute of Lifelong Learning, Univerzitna 1, 010 26 Zilina, Slovakia
Abstract
Research background: Twenty-first century’s sees strong globalization
trends in which mass media play crucial role in shaping public opinion
which might saliently impact intercultural communication on the
international level.
Purpose of the article: This paper focuses on the representation of the
image of Russia and Central and Eastern Europe in the British press and,
besides, it sets out the role of stereotyping in intercultural communication.
The article writers assume that the stereotypes play pivotal role in image
shaping of a country in the media. Above all, the most efficient way to not
stereotype is a straightforward communication of the participants alongside
with the knowledge of the participant’s background, i. e. cultural
knowledge.
Drawing on the information from the British press, Russia, Central as well
as Eastern Europe appears not solely as a geographical region. On the
contrary, despite the fast economic, social and political development,
its image abroad is still predominantly negative.
Methods: The paper, in conjunction with the cultural linguistics and
cognitive approach, reveals the range of metaphorical expressions, in
particular cognitive aspect of metaphors used by British journalists, which,
in turn form the image of Russia in the British press.
Findings & Value added: The paper suggests that the analysis of the
image of country in the mass media might apply to the investigation of
images of other countries as well as to comparative studies.
Keywords: country image; cognitive metaphor; British press; Russia;
social media
JEL Classification: L82; Z13; F69; Z19
*
Corresponding author: silvia.polakova@uniza.sk
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Globalization and its Socio-Economic Consequences 2021
https://doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202112910010
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

1 Introduction
The globalization trend as a major tendency is becoming nowadays a primary vector
quantity in the field of communication as well as in the way of mediation of information
content. The information age has brought both globalization and many other radical
changes that affect all segments of social life, including the media in terms of one of the
most effective ways of communicating information to a wide international environment as
well. In addition, assuming media play an essential role in the digital century, they can be
perceived as a distinctive phenomenon of culture that allows to influence and shape social
consciousness and, furthermore, to manipulate it. On the whole, there arises a rapid
development of intercommunication as an opportunity to ensure cultural contacts in their
broad understanding. It should be noted, however, that the framework of cultural
globalization affects the intensification of cross-border contacts and communication, and, in
turn, it stimulates the desire for knowledge of other cultures using English as a lingua
franca.
In fact, the media are facing new challenges in the context of the rapid increase of
information exchange. As a result, a never-ending supply of information requires their
filtration, processing and, perhaps the most salient, their perception.
Let us now turn to the context of information perception. Receiving of an excessive
amount of information is particularly challenging for the recipients’ consciousness (Dik,
1981). A burden of information forces the recipient’s mind in a variety of ways to choose
selectively and stay focused on the content depth of the received information. On the other
hand, information sender’s of (in our case, journalists) attempt to tailor their formulations in
a way they are able to impact a thoughts, ideas, opinions, attitudes of recipients (readers
and listeners) about the surrounding reality. It should be noted that the media have a wide
range of options for the implementation of the desired function. They may use have various
linguistic signs, which are of a manipulative nature. Consequently, the manipulation might
result in formation of various images of the "enemy" in the social consciousness. In line
with the manipulation, one of the most frequent means of the information battle for
gaining the public opinion is the metaphor. Metaphors provide, on the whole a wide range
of lexical tools for creating positive as well as negative images. Journalists enrich the
information being sent with imagination and expressiveness and, hence enable to impact
recipient profoundly.
The primary aim of the paper is identification of a metaphorical modelling of Russian
image based on stereotypical ideas in the research samples. The writers examined British
newspapers including popular broadsheets (The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The
Financial Times) and tabloid (Daily Mirror, Daily Star) dailies. In general, the English
media tend to personify the ‘enemy’ (for instance, Vladimir Putin) with aggression and
threat: „He was the censor of the Russian media, the butcher of Chechnya, a total stick in
the mud...“ (Gessen, 2017). Considering the enemy concept above, journalists attempt to
strengthen Russia's long-standing stereotype making recipients believe the country poses
threat to the whole world. A similar negative perception of Russia is based on the ’Russia-
aggressor’" stereotype. At the same time, many stereotypes depict countries of Central
Europe (e. g. Slovakia) making international impression being based on still lively
historical stereotypes which refers to communism period.
From a linguistic point of view, a cognitive metaphor is the most effective means of
depicting the country image. The widespread use of metaphors in journalistic texts is a
necessary condition for the functioning of the language of the mass media and contributes
to the implementation of the most important functions of journalism, e. i. persuasion and
emotional influence (Kakorina, 2013).
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Besides, our aim was to point out the fact that above mentioned modelling of the
stereotypical country image can lead to the disruption of intercultural communication. The
term intercultural communication involves two components. Firstly, it is successful
communication drawing on the fulfilment of the communicative aim of senders in discourse
with recipient. Secondly, term ‘cultural’ relates towards understanding the norms, believes,
attitudes and habits specific for a group of the same language (Schulze, 2018). We attend to
the nexus of language and culture briefly in following section.
2 The nature of Language and salience of cultural knowledge within the
intercultural communication
Without any doubt, knowing one’s culture goes hand in hand with knowing a one’s
language. However, knowing of language comprises good command of vocabulary,
grammatical rules being applied in it, pragmatics, and undoubtedly, the cultural background
of the group speaking a particular language. Every single linguistic sign comprises
according to de Saussure two levels: form (signifiant) and meaning (signifié). In this view,
linguistic discipline addressing the relationship among signifiant and signifié, that is,
meaning of the words is semantics. Accordingly, the same dichotomy applies congnitive
linguistics. On the account of grammatical rules, pragmatics and cultural background,
dichotomy of form and meaning deserves a slightly different approach in changing it into
form and function. For example present continuous tense refers in grammar terms typically
to an activity which participants carry out in the time of the speech. Similarly, tag questions
imply the reassuring of one of the participants.
Whorf, belonging to the Boasians, states that ʻlinguistics is essentially the quest of
MEANINGʼ (Whorf, 1956). Despite Whorf’s thesis about linguistics is in line with
alignment form and meaning/function used in semantics, Boasians extended this idea in
devising new approach which is nowadays designated ethnosemantics. More precisely
ʻethnosmeantics covers much of what is studied in cultural and social anthropology,
linguistics, history, and comparative religionʼ and, besides, scholars also associates the term
with ʻethnoscience and cognitive anthropologyʼ (Leavitt, 2014). Boas, the founder of the
movement stated several revolutionary ideas. Firstly assumed that ʻeach language, from the
point of view of another language, may be arbitrary in its classificationsʼ. Secondly, ʻthere
is nothing surprising about an important part of the environment or a crucial aspect of a
people’s life receiving a richer and more specific vocabulary than might be expected among
people in other circumstances ʼ(Boas, 1911). Next, he ‘held that languages are systems, and
that human cultures are semantic wholes, internally integrated to some degree. The
existence of such wholes is revealed geographically by the transformations that given
cultural elements undergo when crossing a cultural boundary’(Leavitt, 2014). The source
for this fine-grained semantics will be detailed description of not only of language but as
well as culture and social environment of a specific group of people. In line with this,
linguists put forward an idea of vocabulary based reconstruction with respect to above
mentioned fields (Frake, 1962). Similarly, another useful method appeared in approach
identifying culture as knowledge which explores the most frequent forms in culture of
specific language (Leavitt, 2014).
On the whole, Boasians were convinced of need to devise a sort of more specifical
semantics which would be derived from general semantics. Furthermore, such a theory
should set out a ‘real systems of meaning’ within usage based framework (Goodenough,
1956).
Our aim was to shed a light on a historical salience of the ethnosemantic approach.
Nevertheless, there occurred methodological programme named Natural Semantic
Metalanguage (Wierzbicka’s (2014), Goddard (2014), in last few decades (Leavitt, 2014).
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Based on previous argumentation, Natural Semantic Metalanguage emerges as a vocabulary
based approach drawing on huge collection of empirical data. In search for identification of
semantic primitives valid across languages, scholars define it a nature of universal language
that would cover all concepts, nuances and functions present, for the most part, across
indigenous culture and languages (Sinha and Bernardez, 2014). For sure, European
languages and culture are known to us as Europeans very well. However, there arises
a problem when scholars or journalists using Western languages attempt to conceive
language different from theirs, that is, exotic, indigenous or, so to say, historically or
geographically rather East – oriented languages and cultures. Hence, ethnopragmatics
might play key role in bridging the gap among different cultures as well as in diminishing
of false interpretations at studying foreign culture (and language). Moreover,
ethnopragmatics migt help in avoding of distorted views of exotic cultures. Thus, Goddard
and Ye (2014) focus on accessing of ‘insider perspectives’ putting the emphasis on ‘local
categories’ and ‘local ways of speaking’ description which are subsumed under term
linguistic evidence. The foreign culture examination relies on semantic primitives (or
semantic primes) having been scrutinized in thirty languages using metalanguage nor
lexically neither conceptually associated with English (or language ‘denaturalized of Anglo
English concepts’. Wierzbicka (2014) worked out the fifty Anglo English cultural key
words:
behaviour, business, challenge, commitment, common sense, communication,
competition, control, culture, deadline, depression, efficiency, emotion, empirical, enjoy,
entitled, evidence, experience, facts, fair, freedom, friend, frustration, fulfilment, fun,
happy, humour, information, kindness, mind, opportunity, options, personal, privacy,
rational, reality, reasonable, relationship, rights, rude, rule, science, security, self, sense,
sex, story, suggestion, tolerance, work.
Wierzbicka argues for difficulties when attempting to find equivalents for the cultural
key words across European languages, and even more, it is impossible to find matches for
them in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the precise study of the key words is beyond
scope of this study. Our aim was only to shed a light on a primary issue with the Anglo
English view of the world. The scholars scrutinize the specific area of vocabulary. Thus,
among the most examined phrases count these lexico-semantic groups: Cultural key words,
Proverbs and common sayings, Words for social and biosocial categories, Words for
speech acts and genres, Terms of address, Interactional routines, Derivational morphology
expressive of social meanings, Specialized lexicogrammatical constructions, Discourse
particles and interjections (Goddard and Ye, 2014).
Wierzbicka’s and Goddard’s work contributed to the establishment of theory of cultural
scripts. Cultural scripts are ‘representations of cultural norms which are widely held in a
given society and are reflected in the language’ (Wierzbicka , 2014).
In Russian speech community, for example, words velikodušnyj and ščedryj do not
match the English term generous in its full semantics. There occurs rather an overlapp
among them and, furthermore, there arises a possible distortion of the Russian terms when
attempting to translate them using the adjective generous. The meaning discrepancies as
well as unclear sense of the generousity concept are the rationales for the engagement of
Natural semantic mentalanguage approach with its comparative semantics, pragmatics and
the theory of cultural scripts [A], [B], [C].
[A] A Russian cultural script
at many times, it is good if someone wants to say to someone else:
‘I think like this now, I feel something because of this’ (Chapter 23 Wierzbicka 2015:340)
[B] A Russian cultural script
at many times, it is good if someone wants to say to someone else:
‘I think like this now’
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[C] A Russian cultural script
sometimes it is good if someone wants to say to someone else:
‘I think something bad about you now’ (Wierzbicka , 2014).
Thus, the cultural scripts prove Russian’s preference for straightforward expression of
thoughts primarily among friends.’and cultural scripts valuing, roughly speaking,
unguardedness and communicative spontaneity are a salient part of Russian cultural
tradition‘ (Wierzbicka , 2014). Let us now turn, on the contrary, to an example of the Anglo
cultural script, in which usage of particle well provides a solid evidence for rather opposite
phenomenon compared to the Russian straightforward expression. Consider the cultural
script:
[D] An Anglo cultural script at many times, when someone wants to say something to
someone else about something it is good if this someone thinks like this:
‘I want to say it well because of this, I want to think about it for some time before I say it’
The Anglo speakers, especially politicians, frequently use particle well to gain some time to
think and shape the answer knowing that their response is recorded. Clear evidence into its
functions is apparent when structures like Well, yes. But… or Well, no. But… (Wierzbicka ,
2014).Such a way of speaking convincingly differs from the Russian, though in different
context, in terms of tailoring the real emotions in the way they suit the message best for
his/her hidden purpose.
Our aim was, for the most part, to prove that the words and situation have their cultural
background or meaning typically associated with, respectively. Hence, we are convinced of
the need to what extent are the ideas expressed by western journalist plausible when
providing a picture of any country when there is insufficient knowledge of Russian culture.
3 Cognitive approach to the formation of the image of the country. The
role of metaphors in human thinking.
The research of metaphor as one of the most important area of modern cognitive science
surpassed, as opposed to the traditional way of perceiving metaphor such as "abbreviated
comparison" or as a kind of interaction of two deep structures. Specifically, modern
cognitive science (J. Lakoff, M. Johnson, A .P. Chudinov) considers metaphor as a way of
knowing, structuring, evaluating and explaining the world, and, at the same time, actively
participating in shaping the model of the world. For these reasons, the use of cognitive
metaphor is to a great extent popular in journalism. Accordingly, in the modern theory and
practice of the cognitive approach to metaphor, the well-known study of J. Lakoff and M.
Johnson "Metaphors We Live By", metaphor plays an important role (Lakoff and Johnsen,
2003). In conjunction with the fact that the metaphor can also carry out a negative function
in modelling the country image Georege Lakoff’s words, saying ‘metaphors can kill’ in
response to official justifications for US‐led wars in the Persian Gulf. Unsurprisingly, it is
the phrase that begins his famous publication Metaphor and War. The Metaphor System
Used to Justify War in the Gulf (Lakoff, 1991) in which the author revealed the methods of
metaphorical justification for preparing the wars of the United States and its allies against
Iraq. In this publication, he presented his methodology for the study of conceptual political
metaphors as well.
Current science perceives the cognitive metaphor (or cognitive political metaphor) as a
tool for comprehension, modelling and evaluation if e.g. political processes and,
simultaneously, as a means of influencing social consciousness. Later on, the theory of
conceptual metaphor developed and theories such as theory of metaphorical modelling
emerged (Chudinov, 2001).
To sum up, metaphors help us to transform the linguistic image of the world existing in
the mind of the addressee. Besides, they introduce a new categorization of seemingly
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known phenomena to ideas, being thus responsible for influencing the awareness of
individuals.
4 Portraying a stereotype image of Russia by modern British press and
preliminary research
The current image of Russia is rooted in still lively historical stereotypes, some dating to
the age of past times, especially to the era of the Tsarist Empire or Soviet union time
period.
In general, stereotypes provide often quite stable image inherited from generation to
generation. Therefore It is very difficult to separate politics and consciousness. Frequently
associated with real individual facts and manifestations, they also become the basis for the
formation of a whole system of mythological concepts and ideas (Sadokhin, 2014).
Enormous influence of stereotypes on human consciousness addressed Lippmann in his
book „Public Opinion“ (1922), in which he identifies stereotypes as „the pictures in our
heads“. Accordingly, Lippmann wrote that stereotypes are so persistently passed down
from generation to generation that they are often seen a reality or biological fact.
Nevertheless, if personal experience contradicts the stereotype, the person, for the most
part, is not interested for some reason in changing his views. The person either simply does
not notice this contradiction, or considers it as an exception that confirms the rule.
Within the cognitive linguistics’ framework, social groups or of individuals as prototypical
representatives of these groups account for a stereotype as a standardized worldview. . At
the same time, the stereotype takes the form of a judgment which, as a whole, attributes
certain characteristics to a certain group of people or, on the contrary, denies them those
characteristics.
Our paper carries out an exploration of linguistic modelling of the Russia image based
on the stereotypical ideas through cognitive political metaphors, which British press might
use purposefully to create a subjective interpretation of events. Moreover, the logic behind
using metaphor as something that can be interpreted subjectively convincingly takes on
pivotal role in the field of journalism. Such a combination of the country’s of a country,
which has already been created in the linguistic image of a nation's world, impacts saliently
mass’s consciousness of the people by means of the media. To put it simply, the paper
focuses on a study of metaphorical models reflecting the political reality of Russia of the
21st century.
To compile the image of Russia, writers selected two British newspapers - The
Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. Hence, scholars have examined a Russophobic mood
considering most of the cognitive political metaphors. Based on the preliminary research,
and moreover, because of similarity of images regarding the topic and its description, we
aimed to summarize the newspaper articles depicting the image of the Russian Federation
in one paragraph. In virtually every article having examined, similar topics such as: „Russia
is a threat“, „ Russia - Dangerous country “,„ Russia - aggressor “, etc. were recurring.
Especially, our attention will be drawn to one of the most widely used lexical tools for
depicting stereotypes - metaphors. The writers would like to use a term “Western birth”
metaphor they mention in particular following metaphors:
1. Military metaphor – “Cold War behaviour”.
2. Sociomorphic metaphor – “Russia – aggressor”,
3. Metaphorical portrait of the Russian President – „Putin – tsar“, „his ministers - boyars “
4. A metaphorical depiction of Russia's domestic politics – “Soviet Russia”, “Russia´s pre-
revolutionary empire”
5. Metaphorical depiction of Russia's international relations – “Putin – a salesman of
Armagedon”
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Drawing on the metaphors (1-5) terms such as “aggressor”, ”aggression“ in relation to
Russia occur relatively frequently. Specifically, the metaphorical models are of emotional
nature and emphasize negative ideas related to the stereotype of Russia. Typically, most
articles about Russia is associated with V. V. Putin. Public image-building of Russia via
media undoubtedly begins with its head, Vladimir Putin. Many British journalists assume,
his role in Russia is to restore the Soviet regime and enrich himself: “…a unique historical
leader of Russia – able to unite fervent advocates of the Communist-era Soviet Union with
those who dream of Russia’s pre-revolutionary empire, built on Orthodox Christianity,
Putin as a KGB “thug” who had enriched himself“ (Groskop, 2018)
An another example of in similar vein deeply rooted negative view of the hetero-
stereotype of Russia is the idea of the head of state as a tsar, and of his entourage and
ministers as boyars: „Good tsar, bad boyars [noble advisers]“ (Roth, 2018). To complete
the image of a dangerous person, V. V. Putin is introduced as a salesman of Armageddon:
“Putin looked like a salesman of Armageddon”
(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/27/vladimir-putins-bloody-adventure-syria-
will-give-no-lasting/).
In addition, most contexts in the British press seem to put forward metaphorical expressions
referring to image of post-Soviet reality, i.e. in restoring Russia's special status as a
„superpower“: ”Underlying Putin’s actions is a sense of Russian exceptionalism…His
attitude is rooted in the era of the dominant Soviet superpower”, (Tisdall, 2018) or “When
looking at Russia´s actions in Ukraine, Georgia, Syria or its militarisation of the Arctic we
are often told by commentators that we are dealing with a “Soviet Russia” or that what we
see being done by Moscow is “Cold War behaviour”. (Coffey, 2017)
Obviously, the English press pays a lot of attention to the foreign and domestic policies of
the Russian Federation. However, this perception is often negative, drawing an attention to
V.V. Putin (Ilyushkina and Chudinov, 2019; Solopova and Chudinov, 2018)
There appears to be clear evidence that stereotypes support the negative image of the
Russia. At present, it is natural that among the studies of the visual representation of
politicians in cartoons, publications dedicated to the image of heads of state and current
political and economic problems dominate (Budaev and Chudinov, 2020).
Besides, Western readers might be wrong when creating an opinion about not only an
average Russian citizen, but Eastern and Central Europe citizens as well. One of the reasons
for stereotyping an image of the countries is, on the whole, the political system or common
history. In our case, there exists explicit influence of the former Soviet Union that
contributes to the shaping of stereotypical images of the countries. Unfortunately, it creates
communication barriers and hinders the ability of unprejudiced international interaction.
5 Research Methodology
Writers’ aims was to provide the comprehensive media image of Russia formed by British
press and to what extent thus demonstrated image of Russia affects other countries, e.g.
Slovakia. We applied the simplest sampling method – census. To examine the use of
conceptual metaphor in political discourse as a primary cognitive process of acquiring
knowledge in the potential impact on the influence of human consciousness, and the
formation of the image of the country, the central object of the research is identification of
various fields of metaphorical extension in political discourse.
The scholars extracted examples illustrating the cognitive metaphors of political
discourse from the internet analogues of the English periodicals. The material for the
research is the texts of mass media of the 2010s-2018s, reflecting the current social
situation in Slovakia and of the 2018s (from January to April) reflecting socio-political
situation in Russia.
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Since the stereotypes are immensely powerful in forming an intrinsic image of
a country, they can affect the image a country on the international level as well. Therefore,
one of our aims was to provide the comprehensive media image of Slovakia in the selected
period applying the simplest sampling method – census. The acquired data were processed
and evaluated using statistical methods - the chi-square test. Cognitive-discourse analysis
and metaphorical modelling were used as the main research methods. We selected
dominant metaphorical models, considering the sources and goals of metaphorical
extension, which goes back to the ideas of J. Lakoff and M. Johnson.
7 Discussion and results
Based on the analysis of the materials, we indeed observed the British media attempt to
strengthen the perception of Russia as a threat to the world. In line with the deep-rooted
negative attitudes towards Russia being based on several stereotypes, the most popular
stereotyping is “Russia is an aggressor”.
With regard to the theme "Russia and Europe", it can be said that the ideas about Russia
and the Russians, created and spread in the West, have a significant impact on other states
and nations of Europe. Beside, the development of Russian Europeanism and other
countries that experienced a similar historical ideology in the past are largely influenced by
such ideas as well. Such a picture impacts negatively the perception of the Slovakia
negatively in terms of pointing out the Post soviet countries history by Anglo centred
periodicals. Therefore, Eastern Europe is not only a geographical region, on the contrary, it
is a cultural zone o(r a region) defined by a common communist history. The clear
evidences for this prove the results of content analysis determining the presence or absence
of explicit placement (localisation) of Slovakia in the regions of Central Europe, Eastern
Europe, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), in newspaper articles in five online British
dailies in 2010-2014.
To confirm the result validity, the chi-square statistical test was applied here.
Table 1. Localising Slovakia in British dailies (2010-2014)
Slovakia
placed in:
Central
Europe
Eastern
Europe
CEE
or Central
and Eastern
Europe
No
localisa-
tion
Central
Europe +
CEE
Central
Europe +
Eastern
Europe
FT
20
9
46
81
1
2
Daily
Telegraph
3
2
0
45
0
0
Guardian
1
7
1
92
0
0
Daily
Mirror
0
1
0
42
0
0
Daily Star
2
8
0
120
0
0
Total
26
27
47
380
1
2
Source: British Dailies (2010-2014)
Table 1 demonstrates that the majority of articles (380 out of 481) did not include any
geographical localisation. The analysis revealed the use of the abbreviation CEE – Central
and Eastern Europe, occurring almost exclusively in The Financial Times (1 occurrence in
The Guardian). The Financial Times placed Slovakia in 46 articles in CEE, in 20 in Central
and in 9 in Eastern Europe. In 3 cases Slovakia was part of CEE and Eastern Europe and
CEE and Eastern Europe.
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The Daily Telegraph placed Slovakia 3 times into Central Europe, 2 times into Eastern
Europe and 45 articles included no explicit localisation. In The Guardian, 1 case of
placement of Slovakia into Central Europe and 7 cases of its placement into Eastern Europe
occurred. The articles in Daily Mirror only indicated 1 case of localisation – into Eastern
Europe. Daily Star placed Slovakia 2 times into Central Europe and 8 times into Eastern
Europe.
Applying the statistical chi-square test, we aimed to establish a possible dependency of
the article tonality and the explicit localisation of Slovakia. As the variable p value was
higher than 0.05 (p = 0.145), we cannot claim that the localisation and tonality are
dependent. We assume certain arbitrariness in placing Slovakia on the map of Europe
confirms vagueness in its perception abroad. The perception of Slovakia as an Eastern
European country can be understood as a highly symptomatic characteristic of its image,
because we assume that this localisation can express or bear certain cultural stereotypes.
We believe that it is possible not only to consider the nature of modern Western stereotypes
concerning Russia, but also to take into account their formation from antiquity to the
present in order to better understand their development and implementation of an idea
based on historical features and traditions.
The problem of interaction and relations between Russia and European countries has
many different interpretations. We should not forget that Russia originated as a country
located in Europe and Asia. Nowadays, some scientists use the term "bridge between two
great civilizations - European and Asian" in relation to Russia, not only in terms of
"geography" but also in terms of the cultural and historical components that shaped Russia's
Eurasian territorial features. This characteristic has influenced the formation of Russian
statehood since ancient times (Chubaryan, 2017; Chubaryan, 2011).
8 Conclusion
In the modern information society, it is difficult to overestimate the role of the media,
allowing, on the one hand, people to understand complex socio-political processes. On the
other hand, they impact enormously public opinion as well as ideas about individual facts
occurring worldwide concerning political authorities. The current phase of society's
development constitute the basic processes of categorization and evaluation of modern
reality, various possibilities of interpretation of political and cultural phenomena, formation
of the national image of the world, perception of other linguacultural features of lexical
units, and like, that find their application in the media space (Dulebova and Kryukova,
2017).
To sum up, the paper addresses the problem of the ethnic stereotype “Russia” in the
English-speaking media. Based on the research, we can confirm that the British media is
trying to strengthen Russia's centuries-old stereotype as a threat to the whole world. Such a
negative view of Russia is primarily based on the stereotype “Russia is the aggressor.” The
article analyses the metaphorical modelling of the Russia image based on stereotypical
ideas.
A stereotype can be both true and false, turning into prejudice. Therefore, stereotypes
are often used in propaganda to influence the mass consciousness in journalism. It should
be noted that the ethnic stereotype “Russia” is used by English journalists through
metaphorical models (for instance, “The President of Russia is the Tsar”) for propaganda
purposes to spread a negative image of Russia. The skill of effective communication with
the recipient belonging to foreign culture in his or her mother tongue is, ultimately, a
demanding task. Its successful achievement requires the cultural (or linguacultural)
knowledge involved in various discourse types (Obdalova and Odegova, 2014).
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In addition, scholars proved that combination of the stereotype of a country, already
created in the linguistic image of a nation's world, alongside with the image created by the
media, significantly increases the mechanism of influence on the mass consciousness. The
negative image of Russia abroad, especially in popular culture, is still predominantly
negative. Convincingly, such a view effects negatively the international communication
which post communist countries, Slovakia among others, are exposed to.
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