Authors

Discussion

In the years 2022-2023, there has been a growing trend of research into the cultural, linguistic, social and psychological consequences of Russia-Ukraine war. This study is focused on identifying psycholinguistic markers of war-related trauma in the narratives of today's Ukrainians and of the well-known Ukrainian writer and public figure Bohdan Lepkyi (1872-1941). Our aim is twofold: firstly, to identify any changes that occurred in the civilians at the end of the first year of Russia-Ukraine war; secondly, to compare the current data with those found in Lepkyi's literary works, which depict similar content features of the tragedy of Ukrainians who had fought in opposite camps during the First World War and later for their independence against the Russians a century ago, and today's war against the same enemy. Using the LIWC 2015 software (Pennebaker et al., 2015) and ANOVA statistics, we analysed 354 publicly available testimonies from the Facebook group "Writings from the War", together with 31 war stories by Lepkyi and a reference corpus of 100 literary prose texts by Ukrainian authors. The Facebook narratives revealed three prominent LIWC categories related to social relations: 'We', 'Social' and 'Family', which reflect shared values such as trust and protection among people who group together in the face of threats. A closely related finding is the greater prevalence of the category 'Affiliation' in the Facebook corpora compared to the literary and Lepkyi corpora. Another LIWC category, 'Achievement', which was insignificant during the first six months of the war (see details in: Zasiekin et al., 2022), has gained significance in the current narratives. This suggests that Ukrainians are praising their advances after one year of resistance and fighting against the enemy. The salient role of 'Affiliation' and 'Achievement' in the Facebook narratives is consistent with the more substantial impact of the LIWC categories 'We' and 'Social', which amplify the effect of 'togetherness'. Lepkyi's stories showed none of this, implying that he could not rely on others during the tragic times of that war a century ago. Using special text analysis formulas, we defined the style of the authors - analytical or narrative. The data showed that the Facebook authors opted for an analytical style, focusing more on cognitive reprocessing, or reappraisal, of their painful experiences, thus reinforcing psychological resilience, which is seen as a positive trait (Pennebaker et al., 2000). This differs dramatically from Lepkyi's war writing, whose narrative style, together with a lack of social bonding markers and high indices of negative emotions, e.g. 'Anger', suggests that he may have been experiencing emotional distress, if not PTSD, at the time of writing due to the suffering of the war and its aftermath.