The article presents a cognitive-discursive analysis of intertextual and pragmatic mechanisms involved in constructing the archetypal image of Iran as an enemy in English-language digital discourse. The subject of the study is the intertextual and pragmatic mechanisms underlying enemy image formation in user comments on the Reddit platform. The aim is to identify and systematize these mechanisms and to describe their interaction. The relevance of the study is determined by the growing role of user-generated digital discourse in shaping public opinion on international conflicts, as well as by insufficient scholarly attention to the cognitive-discursive mechanisms of enemy image construction in online comments. The corpus comprises 300 comments published on Reddit during the US military operation "Epic Fury". The methodology includes cognitive-discursive analysis drawing on C. G. Jung's theory of archetypes, V. Ya. Propp's narrative morphology, G. Lakoff and M. Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory, E. W. Said's concept of Orientalism, J. Culpeper's impoliteness theory, and T. A. van Dijk's ideological square model. The analysis identified three archetypal enemy models: "absolute evil" (Iran as an existential threat), "enemy of the Christian world" (emphasis on religious confrontation), and "barbarian" (dehumanization through zoomorphic metaphors and markers of uncivilizedness). The findings demonstrate that these mechanisms operate in a mode of cognitive resonance, mutually reinforcing their impact on the reader. The novelty lies in applying an integrative cognitive-discursive model to user-generated digital discourse and in identifying the cognitive resonance mechanism. The results are applicable to developing digital political discourse models, media literacy education, and information-psychological countermeasures.
Mariia Aleksandrovna Istrakova (Wed,) studied this question.
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