Komično u tragičnom: ratni internet memovi u Ukrajini
The Comical in the Tragic: Ukrainian War Memes

Summary/Abstract: Our research is based on discourse analysis, which takes into account the pragmatic and socio-cultural aspects of how wartime internet memes have evolved over the past six months since the start of the great Russian invasion of Ukraine. The article is designed to first outline the inclusion of humor in the value orientational profile of Ukrainian culture, so the focus of the research is narrowed down to the thematization of the reflections shown in war internet memes, defining their communicative intentions, as well as the characteristics of the comic effect. We use works about postcolonialism and the category of kitsch in Ukrainian culture, communication theory, post folklore in Ukraine, and the problems that are typical for contemporary studies about memes creating. The internet meme genre is presented as a component of the tradition of laughter that developed in the in colonized Ukrainian society and during the post colonial period of independent Ukraine, representing the continuous resistance to politics of destroying the Ukrainian identity and state building idea. Verbal visual memes have a great comic potential that is realized in the picture text relations. Image selection, collage, mimicry of form, metaphorization, grotesque, hyperbole, paradox, oxymoron –everything serve to create simple intertextual “puzzles” that contribute to the virality of memes. The pragmatic dimension of Ukrainian war time internet memes is reflected in the actualization of the following intentions: consolidation of own and separation of the others, protection of the Ukrainian’s right to their own identity, emphasising of the differences and oppositions be tween Ukrainian and Russian values, stereotyping them through the opposition freedom – slavery, showing Ukrainian arm forces as heroes, disparagement and discredit of the enemy, destruction of propaganda myths and fakes, reduction of war related stress and dread.

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