Abstract

The present article deals with the corpus analysis of posts and comments published online by Russian emigrants about to presidential elections in 2012. By studying this corpus the paper intends to define, classify and analyze the notion of group belonging (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher & Wetherell, 1987; Baumeister & Leary, 1995). For the attainment of this goal, the paper departs from the analysis of deicitc personal references 'we', 'you' and 'they' and their derived forms. It is claimed that this approach draws attention to the way immigrants are related to their context of origin. The obtained results evidence the importance for immigrants to belong to a large group of Russians. At the same time, immigrants reveal a rather 'insecure' (Tajfel, 1974) position in their posts and especially comments, in comparison with 'secure' and sometimes hostile position of Russian residents authors.