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In:Discourses of War and Peace: 21st century perspectives
Edited by Cornelia Ilie
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 355] 2026
► pp. 250–277

Peace into war transformation in news discourse on Ukraine

A cognitive-rhetorical perspective

 | Kyiv National Linguistic University
 | Kyiv National Linguistic University
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
The chapter explores the media construction of peace into war transformation in Ukraine since 2013 domestic unrest till the beginning of the 2022 full-fledged armed conflict by applying the cognitive-rhetorical method of analysis. It combines categorisation with rhetorical canons revealing four periods of peace into war transformation in Ukraine denoted by linguistic units in the prominent positions of news texts. The periods comprise breach of peace, subdivided into initiative, intense, confrontational, intervening, (potential) war stages; impasse, characterised by the rivalry between the conflict and crisis keywords; pre-war, marked by the opposition between crisis and tension; war beginning structured by the units conflict — war in Ukraine — Ukraine war, offering different perspectives of a full-fledged confrontation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methods and material
    • 2.1Rhetorical stages of analysis
    • 2.2Cognitive method of categorisation
      • 2.2.1Views on categorization
      • 2.2.2Image-schematic vantage construction of categories
    • 2.3Material
  • 3.Corpus analysis in four steps
    • 3.1Signals of the breach of peace period in Ukraine
      • 3.1.1Relevant use of the keyword Unrest in the initiative stage
      • 3.1.2Relevant use of the keyword Stand-off in the public tension stage
      • 3.1.3Significant uses of the keyword Conflict in the confrontation stage
      • 3.1.4Shifting shades of meaning of the keywords Conflict and Crisis
        in the impasse stage
    • 3.2Signals of impasse period in Ukraine
      • 3.2.1Shifting shades of meaning of the keywords conflict and crisis
      • 3.2.2Contextual differences between the use of the keywords Conflict and Crisis
    • 3.3Signals of the pre-war period in Ukraine
      • 3.3.1New uses of Crisis as a major keyword
      • 3.3.2Uses of the keyword Tension to emphasise the imminence of war
      • 3.3.3Shift from the verbs of speaking to agentive verbs
    • 3.4Signals of the period of the beginning of a full-scale war
      • 3.4.1Uses of the keyword Conflict in association with To invade and Invasion
      • 3.4.2Uses of units War in Ukraine and Ukraine war to highlight
        the intensified confrontation
      • 3.4.3The keyword Crisis in the stage of intensified confrontation
  • 4.Discussion and conclusions
  • Comment on ethics
  • References
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