POLITICAL CARICATURE AS A KIND OF CREOLIZED TEXT IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CRISIS OF UKRAINIAN-RUSSIAN RELATIONS (ON THE MATERIAL OF THE GREEK PRESS)

Using scientific works in the field of creolized text theory, an attempt was made to analyze the specific features of political caricature in Greek mass media discourse, as well as to identify the role of verbal and nonverbal components of creolized political caricature texts in conditions of hybrid warfare. The research department of 162 political caricatures of national and world political leaders and international events in the context of the crisis of Ukrainian-Russian relations served as the material of the presented work. Illustrations were selected from the Greek media, including newspapers, magazines, social networks, thematic blogs and websites. The subject of research in this work were structural, lexical-semantic, graphic and historical-cultural characteristics of the creolized text of political caricature in Greek and English. In order to achieve this goal, the authors of the article solved the following tasks: 1) define the concept of «creolized text» and give synonymous definitions; 2) identify the characteristics of political caricature as a genre / type of creolized text in political, media and artistic discourses; 3) analyze and describe the relationship between the structural components of the creolized text of a political caricature; 4) identify common stylistic devices of political caricature and give examples. The performed analysis of the works showed that the real world in the information space is transmitted through the prism of metaphor, irony, antithesis, animation, personification, metonymy, and synecdoche. The work highlights the leading anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images of famous political leaders, as well as strategies and tactics of their formation in terms of cognitive metaphor. Common tactics in political cartoons include tactic of «hanging» labels, tactic of contemptuously ironic belittling of any advantages of the target (strength, significance, quality, scale, etc.), and tactic of exaggeration of its disadvantages.