Dissertation Defense: Ekaterina Soloveva

Candidate: Ekaterina Soloveva

Major: German

Advisor: Marianna Ryshina-Pankova, Ph.D.

Title: Post-Soviet Migrant Identity Through the Eyes of “Generation 1.5″”: Multimodal SFL-based Study of Instagram Discourse

Post-Soviet migrants, as the largest migrant group in today’s Germany, often face problematic and one-sided portrayals in mainstream German media, primarily being framed as supporters of the right-wing political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Putin’s regime, and as “foreign neighbors”. As “cultural hybrids” (Todorova, 2018), particularly those of “Generation 1.5” (Panagiotidis, 2021) who either were born in Germany to migrant parents or immigrated in the 1990s with their families, these individuals critically respond to these narratives using social media platforms such as Instagram.

This dissertation employs an ideological framework of Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA) and a methodological framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to analyze the Instagram discourse produced by post-Soviet migrant activists in Germany. PDA focuses on the empowering role of language, examining the discourse of dissent, resistance, and marginalized communities. SFL views language as a social semiotic system, emphasizing the meaning-making aspect of language production. By analyzing all three semiotic genres of an Instagram post—image, written caption, and comments—through PDA and SFL lenses, this study explores how post-Soviet migrant activists use Instagram for identity construction, negotiation, and ommunity building, creating alternative narratives to those dominant in mainstream media.

The study first examines the verbal components of Instagram posts — captions and comments – using the SFL-based Attitude framework to identify patterns of stancetaking and evaluative language. It extracts and analyzes popular themes related to identity, integration, and community. Subsequently, the study analyzes visuals using SFL-based visual grammar to understand how visual elements communicate issues concerning post-Soviet migrant experience and identity, supporting and enhancing the textual content.

Considering that discursive identity is performative (Buccholtz & Hall, 2005), and stancetaking (Du Bois, 2007; Jaffe, 2009) is a discursive act allowing positioning and alignment in relation to others, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of the central issues related to the construction of the identity of post-Soviet migrants on Instagram. Focusing on the three semiotic genres (Mapes, 2021) – caption, comment, and image – it demonstrates how social media platforms like Instagram enable post-Soviet migrants to control the discourse about their minority group, assert their identity, align with one another, resist marginalization, and create empowering narratives for their communities.