Article published In:
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict: Online-First Articles

Is this War?

Naming the Russia-Ukraine dispute in three international news providers

ORCID logo | Universidad de Navarra
ORCID logo | Universidad de Navarra

Media discourse around particular subjects comes to shape people’s understanding of that topic. In particular, the words used to describe situations of violence and conflict may colour public perceptions. This paper identifies the main words used to describe the Russia-Ukraine conflict by three international media outlets, Al Jazeera, Euronews and CGTN, from February to May 2022. Following the methodology of corpus-assisted discourse studies, it analyses the nouns used and their most frequent collocates, showing how these reveal the different ways the war was represented in these three media. The results are discussed in the light of differing theories concerning Chinese and Western stances to the conflict, illustrating media roles in the shaping and reproduction of dominant discourses.

Keywords: Russia-Ukraine conflict, Al Jazeera , Euronews , CGTN , CADS
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background to the study
  • 3.Corpora and method
    • 3.1Data collection
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Naming the conflict
    • 4.2Building semantic prosody through collocation
      • 4.2.1War
      • 4.2.2Invasion
      • 4.2.3Operation
      • 4.2.4Conflict
      • 4.2.5Crisis
      • 4.2.6Attack
  • 5.Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 March 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00092.bre
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