The techniques of creating the ironic effect in political poetry (on the example of Dmitry Bykov’s poem)

The article is dedicated to studying a political language of a well-known political writer Dmitry Bykov, whose works have brought about a new development in journalism - a poetic journalism. The object under study is one of his poems, written as a reaction to the latest events in Russia, and being, in their essence, a poetic journalistic work. He satirizes the event quite explicitly or describes a character in an ironic manner. Using various compositional, lexical and syntactic techniques, Bykov influences the audience, shaping the readers’ opinion on the latest events and political and public activists. The topicality of the conducted analysis is caused by linguists’ interest to the language of the contemporary journalism; therefore, the stylistic analysis of the poetic work will meet many issues associated with the development of such research directions as functional stylistics and text stylistics, poetic journalism. The goal of this research is to investigate the mechanisms of forming the ironic effect in political poetry through the techniques of linguistic expressiveness. The analysis used continuous sampling methods to identify the linguistic material, a method of stylistic analysis to analyze the stylistic connotation of the revealed linguistic means and the whole poem, as well as a descriptive method. To create the ironic effect in his poem, Dmitry Bykov uses such techniques as mixing different styles of vocabulary, primarily of high and low styles; he actively uses figures of speech (metaphors, epithets, comparisons, oxymorons), syntactical means (antithesis, anaphora) and contrasting. Having analyzed the content of the poem, we are concluding that through comic Dmitry Bykov brings the readers to the tragic: sadness and worry for Russia’s fate and its future are seen through the ironic piece of work. The goal of writing the poem is not making the readers laugh, but making them consider the fate of their motherland. Using various techniques of expressiveness, working to create the poem’s ironic effect, the author manages to shape certain public opinion, which manifests the features of poetic journalism.

Dmitry Bykov, poetic journalism, poem, language of contemporary journalism, figures of speech, lexical means of expressiveness, stylistic figures, irony, ironic effect

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