IRE: A Hypothesis or a Theory?

The paper addresses the issue of Russian English as a world variety used within such multicultural domain as Instagram which is an on-line social networking service. Building on an earlier idea, the paper puts forward a hypothesis regarding the existence of Instagram Russian English (IRE) which in general follows the pattern of Russian English in terms of its distinctive lexical, grammatical and pragmatic characteristics, the three-lectal continuum and the verbalization of the Russian mindset of its speakers. Therefore, IRE does reflect the Russian culture and mentality via both linguistic and pragmatic means.