The force exerted in conflicts together with the online display of messages can affect the construal of warlike contexts. Force-dynamic patterns (Talmy, 2000) offer a plausible explanation on how the creation and interpretation of metaphorical content are influenced by the interaction of opposed entities, i.e. agonists and antagonists. The clash of these two forces is determined by their intrinsic tendencies towards inaction or action; consequently they become obstacles to be overcome, thrust to be blocked, or allowed to move onwards (letting). Mainly, the metaphors about the armed struggle in Ukraine found on Twitter are conveyed through verbal and pictorial modes of representation. In this study the metaphorical schema based on the use of force and multimodal metaphor theory (Forceville and Urios-Aparisi, 2009) provide insightful perspectives on the persuasive tweets in one of the most prominent social networks during the present wartime in Eastern Europe. From the tenets of these theories and in line with recent studies on the persuasive power of metaphor on Twitter (Makhortykh & Lyebyedyev 2015, Grandjean 2016, Kapranov 2016), this study compiles a corpus of 600 tweets retrieved from the hashtags #IStandWithUkraine and #IStandWithRussia about six remarkable events in the conflict occurred from February to May 2022. Essentially, the objective of this research is to analyse the metaphors used within the two different hashtags, and thus to observe how reality is constructed differently as well as compare the persuasive power of these metaphorical messages. Preliminary qualitative results show that the roles of 'us-agonist' and 'them-antagonist' are allocated in each hashtag by the users to seek support from the others through compelling texts and images that in some cases are similar, e.g. analogies with nazism. Nonetheless, these initial conclusions are to be confirmed or denied by the assessment of the obtained quantitative results.
Keywords: Force-dynamic patterns; multimodal metaphor theory; Twitter; Ukraine; persuasive.
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