REFERENTIAL ASPECT OF WORLD-MODELLING IN DIGITAL COMMUNICATION ABOUT MIGRANT WORKERS

Abstract

The author draws on the cognitive-discursive approach to the study of labour migration as a topical social problem of big Russian cities. The objective of the paper is to explore the discursive mechanisms of the world-modelling in the virtual communication about the working migrants. The term ‘discourse-world of labor migration’ is introduced and used to denote a representational structure, textualized in the digital communication about the migrants from Central Asia, arriving in Russian cities in search of work. The research corpus contains posts retrieved from the Telegram channels. The selection includes 1247 contexts in the period from 2019 to 2022. The referential aspect is central to the research. We argued that four categories of social actors are identified in the discourse-world - migrant workers, local residents, authorities, beneficiaries, each category being analyzed in terms of discourse construal. We proved that the evaluation of the labour migrants is mainly negative. The author analyzed the relationships between the social actors through the reference of noun groups and predicates. The results of the research might present interest to discourse analysts for further investigation of the specifics of cognitive-discursive world-modelling.