Online oneiric discourse: transformation of archetypal images into digital metaphors
Liliya Abrarovna Usmanova
Philology Theory & Practice December 24, 2025 DOI: 10.30853/phil20250733 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Russian-language internet forums and dream diaries |
| Key points | Argues that digital metaphors and memetic formulas re-encode traditional archetypes in online dream discourse, with metaphors like bugs, reboots, and simulations serving to compress experience, create emotional distance, and amplify collective meaning, while multimodal elements such as emojis, GIFs, and links compensate for missing non-verbal markers. Contends that archetypal meanings retain their functional load but acquire new semiotic shells, requiring revised theoretical models of archetype and metaphor under mediatization. |
Abstract
The study aims to determine how digital metaphors and memetic formulas reorganize traditional archetypal images and form new models for verbalizing oneiric experience in Russian-language online dream discourse. The article analyzes the lexical and multimodal realizations of dream narratives based on material from Russian-language internet forums and dream diaries; the work utilizes methods of cognitive-linguistic metaphor analysis, discursive and narratological approaches, as well as corpus annotation of multimodal markers. Within the framework of the basic model ‘archetype – digital shell’, semantic fields such as ‘animal/agency’, ‘residential/spatial code’, and ‘path/navigation’ were identified and analyzed, along with the related typology of digital metaphors (bugs, reboots, simulations) and memetic shortcuts. The scientific novelty lies in the systematic representation and typologization of the ‘re-encoding’ processes of archetypes in online discourse and in substantiating their cognitive role: digital metaphors perform the functions of experience compression, emotional distancing, and collective amplification, while multimodal elements (emojis, GIFs, links) compensate for the loss of non-verbal markers and form the hypertextual structure of the narrative. The research results show that archetypal meanings retain their functional load but acquire new semiotic shells, which necessitates further refinement of theoretical models of archetype and metaphor under conditions of the mediatization of consciousness.