Linguistic image of Russia in American printed media (case-study of headline complexes)

The paper presents a linguistic image of Russia as shown by the US printed media. The study was conducted with two interrelated and complementary methods: that of describing associative semantic field and that of investigating qualia-structure of the concept, based on the generative lexicon theory by J. Pusteiovsky. Both methods resulted in building a layered concept structure with a core, a transition zone and periphery. For the purpose of the study, a corpus containing 3636 collocates with “Russia” as the key word was derived from headline complexes of US printed media: The Washington post and the New York Times. The analysis of the structure and composition of the associative semantic field has enabled the author to confirm significant influence of extralinguistic factors on the construction of linguistic images. The study involved processing previously made corpus with corpus management software to provide numeric data on lexemes frequency. Associative semantic field revealed the newsworthy events that put Russia in focus in headlines complexes: President Election of 2016 and investigation of Russia's supposed involvement, intelligence services and related causes celebre, sanctions, armed conflicts, coronavirus spread and oil prices fluctuations. Qualia-structure semantic analysis brought forth the main frames in the Russia concept structure: Russia as an aggressive power, Russia as a counterpart, Russia as a partner, and Russia as a destination.