“To trophy language”. New story in Russian propaganda
One study of disinformation and propaganda methods is the “mirroring” of detection words. The essence of this search at one time was very accurately formulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Whoever calls himself that, he himself is called that.” With these words, he responded to the fact that US President Joe Biden in an interview with the fact that Putin can be called a killer. In the arsenal of children’s counters there is, perhaps, even more accurate: “You speak to me, you transfer to yourself.”
Russian media and officials have demonstrated the technique of such a “translation” more than once. This happened, in particular, with the concepts of “fascism”, “genocide” and even with the term “fake”, Russia began to use against Ukraine, as if turning the story of the crucified boy inside out: real shelling in Mariupol and real atrocities in Irpin and Bucha. The Russian media passed off as a mass “fake”.
Entire narratives have also been adopted. For example, when Ukrainian criminals began to declare that Russia was not taking the bodies of the dead, absolutely the same narrator began to spin in the news of Russian TV channels: it was reported that it was the Ukrainian Tomsk people who “abandoned their own”, were not interested in their fate and did not take the dead .
Quote from the news broadcast of Channel One:
“Leaving the position, the security forces take part in the transmission of the fate of their wounded” (02/03/2022).
However, recently a novelty has appeared in this mirror arsenal – the “appropriation” of the Ukrainian language. “To trophy the language” – that’s how it was already called in Russian publics. I’ve been talking about all my life, as well as “mute for scho”, “bachily eyes, sho kupovaly” and a few more of my favorite Kuban phrases. And I’m not going to give this gentle and well-aimed surzhik (and in our opinion – a balachka), I know from childhood, to some Zelensky, who learned it specially for the choice, ”she wrote in one of the posts (the spelling of the author, which is saved – GA). ).
A few days later, a video clip entitled “Plive Kacha”, filmed at the ruins of Azovstal, began to circulate on social networks. The author of the text was the Mariupol military commander and singer Akim Apachev, who joined the public military with the outbreak of war. At the beginning of the video, the performer Daria Frey, wrapped in a tricolor, sings:
Plive kacha, girls dance,
To bury demons in Azovstal.
in the middle of the steppe palahala hut,
The Bogomatyr is unwilling to give birth.
beer swing
Ukrainian journalists immediately noted that there were unknown words in the text (probably, the version of the Ukrainian language from Margarita Simonyan is used). So, instead of “howyut”, the exciting word “bury instead”, “palala hut” – “palala” is used (here, apparently, an additional syllable was simply voiced, as in the illiterate refrain of the famous song of the 90s “Two Pieces of Sausage”).
There are such phenomena unknown to Ukrainian linguistics in the subsequent text – rap, which comes Akim Apachev himself. The essence of the song is in his words. Russia in the song is waiting in the form of a doctor who “heals sick Ukrainians.” This is followed by a logical conclusion about language assignment:
Tell the truth to the Lyakh about the Muscovite,
Give you the skin word:
This is my home, this is my Crimea, this is my land.
I’m taking the language too!
This song is several levels of propaganda mirroring. Firstly, the very name “Plive kacha” from observation to a cult Ukrainian song, a symbol of the Revolution of Dignity. The performers “appropriate” it, perform their version, the “correct” one, from their point of view, point of view. Secondly, the thesis “we will not give up the language” is completely defeated from the Ukrainian discourse.
“Russia does not have a monopoly on the Russian language. Giving our Ukrainian Russian to Putin is like giving it to German Hitler. Personally, I give my language to no one, I’m not going to, ”he said in interview with Novaya Gazeta one of the most widespread Ukrainian Russian-speaking poets Alexander Kabanov. The same opinion is expressed at different times by other Ukrainian cultural figures. A few years ago, even the ideas of opening an Institute of the Ukrainian Russian Language in Ukraine were voiced: at the heart of this presentation is the idea (fair) that each of the post-Soviet countries had its own version of the Russian language.
However, if in the Ukrainian discourse such thoughts appear logically, given the number of people who speak Russian, then in the Russian media space this sudden message looks absolutely artificial. This is evidenced, among other things, by the comments to Apachev’s video on his VKontakte page: users write that “Ukrainian did not fit anyone” and this is a “funny Slavic dispute.”
Russian politicians and media representatives of the year “fertilized” the audience with assessments that Ukraine and the Ukrainian language do not really exist, but now they are choosing that they are not going to give up this language. It is not clear how a faithful viewer of Russian state channels can navigate these turns. By chance, soon we will hear that Lenin spoke Ukrainian.