The Semantics of Wormwood in Non-Fictional Narratives about the Chernobyl Disaster

This article concerns the semantics of wormwood in the context of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The study considers non-fictional narratives about this catastrophe from an ethnolinguistic and ethnobotanical perspective. The situational semantics of wormwood draws on the symbolism of this plant established in East Slavic folk culture and in the biblical tradition. In non-fictional narratives, however, this meaning is transformed (e.g. by limiting the semantic field) and interpreted in the context of apocalyptic prophecy.