Precedent Anthroponym “Napoleon” as a Means of Constructing Media Images of European Politicians

Purpose . The article examines the usage peculiarities of the universal precedent anthroponym “Napoleon” by the Russian mass media in the process of modeling media images of two modern European politicians – the French President Emmanuel Macron and the Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Results . A corpus of the Russian media texts including more than 500 contexts serve as the material for the analysis. The texts were scrutinised with the help of lexical-semantic, distributional and frame methods to identify and describe the differential features of the precedent anthroponym “Napoleon”. These features coming from three frames (“Anthropometric and Physiological Characteristics”, “Personal Characteristics” and “Social Characteristics”) are regularly used by the Russian mass media to characterize European politicians. Conclusion . It is established that the most popular stereotypical ideas about Napoleon used in the Russian mass media while constructing media images of E. Macron and V. Zelensky are associated with Napoleon’s short stature, young age of coming to power, exorbitant political ambitions, aggression towards Russia and defeat at Waterloo. It is demonstrated that numerous appeals to the image of the French emperor allow the mass media not only to focus attention on the most striking personal and professional traits of European leaders who are ideological opponents of Russia, but also to predict the sad demise of their political career in case of further confrontation with Russia and the implementation of ill-considered political projects

Aesthetics · Art · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European Cultural and National Identity · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics