The groundwork of Putin’s war

Abstract

Every ideology aims at constructing specific representations of reality that many people can easily adopt. In this paper, mental models described as cognitive representations of reality are used to explain how people come to their beliefs. Applying Johnson-Laird’s theoretical concept, I present mental models reconstructed by means of a qualitative analysis of key lexemes in the Crimean speech of Vladimir Putin held in 2014. This reconstruction reveals how the mental models in question target a shared social cognition among listeners using ideologically loaded references articulated in the speech. Furthermore, tracing ideological references allows a preliminary insight into how the speaker aims to affect the discourse formation process of the time. This reconstruction is indispensable to gain a better understanding of the Russian attack on Ukraine, eight years later.