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Article published In: Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Vol. 13:2 (2025) ► pp.182–209

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Is this War?

Naming the Russia-Ukraine dispute in three international news providers

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Navarra
ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Navarra
Published online: 5 March 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00092.bre
Abstract
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.
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
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Novoa Jaso, María Fernanda & Ruth Breeze
2024. Framing the Russia-Ukraine conflict in Chinese Global Television Network English . Tripodos :56 ► pp. 03 ff. DOI logo

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