Nominations of Russian aggression against Ukraine in English-language media: A cognitive-pragmatic study

Abstract

During 2014–2022, the English-language media used several most common nominations for Russia's armed aggression against Ukraine, from CRISIS and SPECIAL OPERATION to WAR, and the choice of the nomination testifies to the political position of the media and changes as events develop. This present study proves that different structures of these concepts determine their different place in the English linguistic world construal and, accordingly, their perception by native speakers. The hypothesis of the work is the thesis that ARMED AGGRESSION is a gestalt multi-appealed concept, different nominations of which – war, operation, crisis – activate different domains in the Eng lish linguistic world construal and in this way manipulate consciousness by changing the concept perception. In order to establish the place of individual concepts in the English linguistic world construal, we conduct a semantic analysis of lexemes representing these concepts, determine their structure and profiling directions. Building on the comprehensive cognitive-pragmatic methodology, the authors establish the semantic volume of lexemes-nominations of these concepts. Their comparative analysis proves that the concept of WAR is the most accurate equivalent of a state of armed aggression, while other concepts distort native speakers’ perceptions of the state of affairs and serve as a means of manipulation, distracting from the aggressor’s war crimes, defenders’ victories and the tragedy of the civilian population suffering from aggression. We claim that there are four main aggressor’s discourse tactics of manipulation: deny, distract, distort, dismay. Our empirical data were obtained from explanatory and etymological dictionaries of the English language and from leading US print media.