States as linguistic participants and their semantic roles in media descriptions of the pandemic

Statement of the problem. The article is devoted to the analysis of Russia, China, the USA, France, European Union, etc. as linguistic participants in the Pandemic situation described in the Russian media. The study of various linguistic objects that represent the state as a territorial-political entity at the level of utterance and text has recently been quite active. Such objects are assigned the status of concept or language image; most often they are analyzed on the material of modern media and regularly in a comparative aspect; the communicative strategy of their use is defined as popularization of ideas about a particular country and its culture; in this regard, the identified centers of interest in Russian linguistics are Russia, China and the USA. All this proves the participation of objects of this type in the formation of the modern linguistic worldview. This picture of the world, in its turn, reacting to the changing reality and circumstances of the existence of society, expands its space, including significant situations, one of which is the global Pandemic situation. The purpose of the article is to identify the typology of language roles in which ‘participating states’ are represented in this situation. The methodology (materials and methods). The methodological basis of the study is based on the provisions of semantic syntax, within which the universal methods of analysis and synthesis, the comparative method, as well as the semantic analysis of the text are used. The analysis is based on articles published on the Internet by Komsomolskaya Pravda, LIFE, RBC, Gazeta.ru, Roscongress, and RIA Novosti (RIA News). Research results. The media demonstrate a special interpretation of the Pandemic situation, and ‘participating states’ as its element occupy a prominent place within the boundaries of the media picture of the world. They are served by a set of seven semantic roles, each of which has a specific content: agent, accomplice, counteragent, beneficiary, harmed subject, locative, and object of characterization. Since most of the identified roles are subject-type roles, states are described here as versatile actors, actively, often collectively, acting to overcome the global crisis. Conclusion. The conclusions are summarized as follows: 1) a ‘participating state’ can be described autonomously, however, most contexts present it in a group, acting and evaluated in an integrated manner, simultaneously with other ‘state’ actors; most often Russia, China, the USA and Europe are discussed in this mode; 2) a noticeable idea that sets the interpretation of a real event is the idea of the common existence of ‘participating states’: at the role level it is concretized as their ‘community’ or ‘universality’, at the situational level, as their ‘unification’, ‘coordination’, ‘cooperation’, even ‘solidarity’; 3) this idea is framed by significant and auxiliary vocabulary with appropriate semantics and is especially emphasized when using the role of a coagent; 4) the description of the pandemic is accompanied by a variety of evaluative meanings, which, on the one hand, qualify this situation as a global problem, and on the other hand, are associated with the hope of its resolution.