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The Image of Russian Business through Linguistic Stereotypical Means
This article deals with the peculiarities of written representation of Russian business in English-language print media. Full-text articles from “The Economist”, published between 2008 and 2014, were selected to analyze the semantics of words and word combinations that imply a Russian business reality. All units were classified according to topic-relation and language sources of stereotypes. The findings showed that the topic-related stereotypes focus on representation of people in three areas – government, business, and realia. As for the linguistic perspective, figurative means are the basic sources for stereotypes, with the emphasis on similes and metaphors of people. Reference sources for figurative means and morphologic means are business-related. Though negative linguistic stereotypes prevail, there are rare positive stereotypes, expressed through syntax. Thus, linguistic stereotypical means help to create the image of Russian business in simplified categories and underlined contrasts: stereotypical lexical units of well-being are combined with characteristics of a poorly-kept country. The intercultural implication of the study is the necessity of enhanced awareness of stereotyping potential of media language.