METAPHOR AS A WAY FOR RUSSIAN SELF-IDENTIFICATION IN THE ONLINE DISCOURSE

The article discusses the Russian citizens’ self-identification at the present stage of society development. It is demonstrated that metaphorization plays a significant role in such processes explicating the most significant features of the idealized community “Russians” constructed by social networks’ users. The research material are self-identifying discursive constructions extracted from social networks through the Yandex. Blogsearch for the period 2013-2023. The collection and primary processing of language material is carried out using the corpus and the content analysis methods. The distributive method and the method of metaphorical modeling are used to classify and interpret the material. It is proved that the metaphorical self-identification of the Russian-speaking social networks’ users is carried out according to the formula “X is Y” including the target sphere (“Russians/Russians”) and numerous source spheres of metaphorical expansion (“Home”, “Family”, “Organism”, “Plants”, “Animals”, “Substances”, “Bodies of Water”, “Astronomy”, and “Cooking”). Two variants of metaphorical self-identification are revealed - positive (most metaphorical models) and negative (zoomorphic model) interpreted by the network community’ representatives as a product of Western propaganda and being harshly criticised. Most metaphors ac-tualise the Russian ethnos passionarity, its ability to unite other peoples, the equality of all nationalities living in Russia which proves that the spontaneous non-professional Russian self-identification does not contradict the principles to which many philosophers, culturologists and sociologists stick.