Brotherhood of Souls in the Face of Tragedy: Meme Discourse in the Aftermath of the Russian Invasion on Ukraine

Abstract

The article is devoted to the Polish-Ukrainian “brotherhood of souls” that emerged due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The author analyses the meme discourse in which Internet users expressed their support for war victims and soldiers. The multimodality and intertextuality of digital messages support creative expression, while the possibility of disseminating, reproducing and modifying them allows every Internet user to participate in multivoiced discourse. The analysis of memes expressing support for Ukraine reveals the mechanisms of conceptual integration of mental spaces, operating on the notions of brotherhood and soul in the war context. The conceptualisation of brotherhood in a war drama situation follows the following pattern: an event assessed as bad (Russia’s attack on Ukraine) evokes reactive emotions of the observing entity (anger, malice, fear), resulting in actions for the victim – both positive (all forms of help and support) and negative (actions to the detriment of the aggressor). The negative actions gain positive value due to the motivation behind them. By attacking the perpetrator of evil, they refer to the moral right to punish the guilty person to defend freedom, justice, and good.