Conceptualizing the Aggressor as an Animal: Metaphors, Memes, and the Russo-Ukrainian War

Animal metaphors are pervasive in languages as many aspects of people’s conduct are understood via animal behavior. Such conceptualizations may be negative or even highly offensive, reinforcing hostility and exclusion. This research draws on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and approaches to multimodal metaphors to examine animal metaphors in Internet memes created and circulated by Ukrainian Internet users during the first year after the Russian full-scale invasion (March 2022–March 2023). Previous scholarship suggests that this digital participatory practice serves not only as a coping mechanism but also as a form of sociopolitical critique. Following this idea, the present study analyzes a corpus of 151 Internet memes to investigate how the image of the aggressor is conceptualized through dehumanization and what purposes it has. The findings reveal that animal metaphors are strategically used to construct the image of the aggressor as ignorant, incompetent, despicable, and monstrous, and that the resultant memetic discourse creates a counter-narrative to Russian media propaganda while serving as a form of resistance.