Bogacheva K.M. The Vocabulary of town-twinning: A Corpus Analysis of the Press in Soviet Karelia (1960s–1980s)

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The Vocabulary of Town-Twinning: A Corpus Analysis of the Press in Soviet Karelia (1960s–1980s)

K. M. Bogacheva
Institute of Language, Literature and History, Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Petrozavodsk, Russian Federation

Abstract

Introduction. The study of the functions of town-twinning city terminology in the regional press of the Soviet period constitutes a relevant scholarly issue. Existing historiography has not addressed this aspect, creating a necessity for the integration of linguistic analysis with a critical examination of Soviet ideology. The reconstruction of the mechanisms of propagandistic influence in the Soviet press allows for a deeper understanding of the nature of historical media discourses, while the analysis of materials from Karelian newspapers provides an opportunity to identify the specificities of how the image of international cooperation was formed, as well as the enduring linguistic patterns of the Soviet era. The aim of this research is to delineate the specific features and mechanisms through which the lexicon of town-twinning relations functioned within the local-historical and broader political context of the period.

Materials and Methods. This study examines the vocabulary of town-twinning ties in the press of Soviet Karelia, drawing on corpora of articles from the newspapers Leninskaya Pravda and Komsomolets (1960–1980). The methodology is based on an integration of corpus technologies (using the Sketch Engine manager) and traditional discourse analysis. The text corpus was processed using the following tools: Word List (for frequency analysis), N-grams (to identify formulaic phrases), and Word Sketch Differences (to analyse contrasts in collocations). This integrated approach enabled the translation of qualitative observations into quantitatively verifiable data.

Results and Discussion. The discourse of twinning in the Karelian press during the second half of the 20th century possessed a strictly hierarchical structure. The dominant ideologeme, fulfilling mythologizing and legitimizing functions, was “friendship”. The term “twin city” occupied a subordinate position, functioning as a technical status marker with limited, situational combinability. Consequently, the propaganda of twinning in the republican press was realized through the sacralization of the “friendship” ideologeme and the ritualization of the “twin city” term. The obtained results demonstrate the efficacy of the corpus manager Sketch Engine for processing large volumes of newspaper texts and identifying statistical patterns. The identified mechanisms reflect the general principles of constructing ideological reality within Soviet media discourse.

Conclusion. This study presents the first comprehensive analysis of the vocabulary of town-twinning relations in the press of Soviet Karelia. A methodology integrating corpus technologies and critical discourse analysis was tested, offering a means to broaden the methodological toolkit for studying the language of Soviet newspapers. The identification of the hierarchical subordination of the term “pobratim” (twin) to the ideologeme “druzhba” (friendship) as a key mechanism of ideological discourse deepens our understanding of the principles of reality construction in the Soviet press. The findings are significant for research in Soviet linguistics and media discourse and can be applied to the study of ideological influence mechanisms in both central and regional media.

Keywords: vocabulary of Soviet newspapers, Sketch Engine, Soviet press, town-twinning, twin city, Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

Funding: The financial support for the research was provided from the federal budget for the implementation of the state assignment of the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (№ 124022000029-0, 2024–2026).

Conflict of interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.

For citation: Bogacheva K.M. The Vocabulary of town-twinning: A Corpus Analysis of the Press in Soviet Karelia (1960s–1980s). Finno-Ugric World. 2025;17(4):398–411. https://doi.org/10.15507/2076-2577.017.2025.04.398-411

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Information about the author:

Ksenia M. Bogacheva, Postgraduate Student, Junior Researcher of the History Department, Institute of Language, Literature and History, Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (11 Pushkinskaya St., Petrozavodsk 185910, Russian Federation), ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-0447-9983, SPIN-code: 1953-3715, bogachevakm@gmail.com

The author has read and approved the final manuscript.

Submitted 13.08.2025; revised 25.09.2025; accepted 29.09.2025.