Startseite National Identity in Media Discourses from Russia and Ukraine: Amid the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

National Identity in Media Discourses from Russia and Ukraine: Amid the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War

  • Bangjun Xu und Yuan Tao EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 15. Juli 2023
Veröffentlichen auch Sie bei De Gruyter Brill

Summary

This paper, based on the corpus of the news from TASS and UKRINFORM between February 24 and March 5, 2022, investigates different concerns of the two media platforms regarding conflict discourses, and analyzes their different naming strategies of social actors from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (CDA). It is found that Russian and Ukrainian media attempted to construct different national identities for each other through distinct discourse strategies. The Russian TASS named Ukraine a security threat while including Donbas as Russia’s in-group member. It also utilized out-group discourse strategies to exclude western countries, such as the United States, from its friend circle. The Ukrainian media discourse from UKRINFORM, however, grouped Ukraine itself together with western countries allied with the United States while stigmatizing Russia and excluding the Donbas region. The current research shows that the politically driven principle is commonly used in the media discourses from TASS and UKRINFORM as the representative national media of the two countries.

Funding

This work was funded by National Social Science Fund of China, Project ID: 20BY221.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the reviewers for the thoughtful reviews and valuable comments which have helped us improve the manuscript. As regards the current military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine and other major Western media use the term “war”, China and some other nations call it “conflict”, while Russia names it “special military operation”. According to the reviewers’ strong suggestion, the word “conflict” throughout the paper was thus revised to “war”.

References

Ainsworth, Susan and Cynthia Hardy. 2004. Critical Discourse Analysis and Identity: Why Bother? Critical Discourse Studies 1(2). 225–259.10.1080/1740590042000302085Suche in Google Scholar

Beard, Adrian. 2000. The Language of Politics. London: Routledge. Suche in Google Scholar

Boulding, Kenneth. 1959. National Images and International Systems. Journal of Conflict Resolution 3(2). 120–131.10.1177/002200275900300204Suche in Google Scholar

Brown, Andrew, Susan Ainsworth and David Grant. 2012. The Rhetoric of Institutional Change. Organization Studies 33(3). 297–321.10.1177/0170840611435598Suche in Google Scholar

Chan, Michael. 2012. The Discursive Reproduction of Ideologies and National Identities in the Chinese and Japanese English-language Press. Discourse & Communication 6(4). 361–378. 10.1177/1750481312457496Suche in Google Scholar

Chen, Chao-Chuan and James Meindl. 1991. The Construction of Leadership Images in the Popular Press: The Case of Donald Burr and People Express. Administrative Science Quarterly 36(4). 521–551.10.2307/2393273Suche in Google Scholar

Cienki, Alan. 2005. The Metaphorical Use of Family Terms Versus Other Nouns in Political Debates. Information Design Journal 13(1). 27–39.10.1075/idjdd.13.1.04cieSuche in Google Scholar

Cooren, François. 2004. Textual Agency: How Texts Do Things in Organizational Settings. Organization 11(3). 373–393.10.1177/1350508404041998Suche in Google Scholar

de Almeida, Roberto and Christina Manouilidou. 2015. Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing. New York: Springer. 10.1007/978-3-319-10112-5Suche in Google Scholar

de Cillia, Rudolf, Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak. 1999. The Discursive Construction of National Identities. Discourse & Society 10(2). 149–173.10.1177/0957926599010002002Suche in Google Scholar

Dutton, Jane and Janet Dukerich. 1991. Keeping an Eye on the Mirror: Image and Identity in Organizational Adaptation. Academy of Management Journal 34(3). 517–554.10.5465/256405Suche in Google Scholar

Engström, Robin and Carita Paradis. 2015. The In-group and Out-groups of the British National Party and the UK Independence Party: A Corpus-Based Discourse-Historical Analysis. Journal of Language and Politics 14(4). 501–527.10.1075/jlp.14.4.02engSuche in Google Scholar

Epstein, Charlotte. 2011. Who Speaks? Discourse, the Subject and the Study of Identity in International Politics. European Journal of International Relations 17(2). 327–350.10.1177/1354066109350055Suche in Google Scholar

Epstein, Charlotte. 2013. Constructivism or the Eternal Return of Universals in International Relations. Why Returning to Language is Vital to Prolonging the Owl’s Flight. European Journal of International Relations 19(3). 499–519. 10.1177/1354066113494669Suche in Google Scholar

Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London/New York: Longman.Suche in Google Scholar

Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. 10.4324/9780203697078Suche in Google Scholar

Fairclough, Norman. 2010. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language (2nd edn.). Essex: Pearson Educational Limited. Suche in Google Scholar

Fairclough, Norman and Ruth Wodak. 1997. Critical discourse analysis. In Teun A. van Dijk (ed.), Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, 258–284. London: Sage.Suche in Google Scholar

Fealy, Gerard, Martin McNamara, Margaret Treacy and Imogen Lyons. 2012. Constructing Ageing and Age Identities: A Case Study of Newspaper Discourses. Ageing and Society 32(1). 85–102.10.1017/S0144686X11000092Suche in Google Scholar

Hansen, Lene. 2006. Security as Discourse: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. London: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar

Jäger, Siegfried and Florentine Maier. 2016. Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis and Dispositive Analysis. In Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (eds.), Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis (3rd edn.), 109–136. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Suche in Google Scholar

Koller, Veronika. 2012. How to Analyze Collective Identity in Discourse: Textual and Contextual Parameters. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines 5(2). 19–38.Suche in Google Scholar

Lakoff, George. 2002. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservative Think. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226471006.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar

Lamertz, Kai and Pursey Heugens. 2009. Institutional Translation through Spectatorship: Collective Consumption and Editing of Symbolic Organizational Texts by Firms and their Audiences. Organization Studies 30(11). 1249–1279.10.1177/0170840609337935Suche in Google Scholar

Lichtenstein, Dennis and Christiane Eilders. 2018. Lost in uncertainty: How the Euro Crisis Affected European Identity Constructions in National Media Discourses. International Communication Gazette 81(6–8). 602–622.10.1177/1748048518814357Suche in Google Scholar

Littlejohn, Stephen and Karen Foss. 2011. Theories of Human Communication (10th edn.). Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press. Suche in Google Scholar

McPhee, Robert. 2004. Text, Agency, and Organization in the Light of Structuration Theory. Organization 11(3). 355–371.10.1177/1350508404041997Suche in Google Scholar

Murphy, Alexander. 2005. Territorial Ideology and Interstate Conflict: Comparative Considerations. In Colin Flint (ed.), The Geography of War and Peace, 280–296. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780195162080.003.0020Suche in Google Scholar

Musolff, Andreas. 2006. Metaphor Scenarios in Public Discourse. Metaphor and Symbol 21(1). 23–38.10.1207/s15327868ms2101_2Suche in Google Scholar

Pérez-Sobrino, Paula. 2013. Personification and Ideology in the American Media Coverage of the Iranian Green Revolution. Text & Talk 33(2). 233–258. 10.1515/text-2013-0011Suche in Google Scholar

Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak. 2001. Discourse and Discrimination Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar

Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak. 2009. The Discourse-Historical Approach in CDA. In Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2nd edn.), 87–121. London: Sage. Suche in Google Scholar

Samaie, Mahmoud and Bahar Malmir. 2017. US News Media Portrayal of Islam and Muslims: A Corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Analysis. Educational Philosophy and Theory 49(14). 1–16. 10.1080/00131857.2017.1281789Suche in Google Scholar

Scheibman, Joanne. 2007. Subjective and Intersubjective Uses of Generalizations in English Conversations. In Robert Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, 111–138. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.164.06schSuche in Google Scholar

Scott, Mike and Christopher Tribble. 2006. Textual Patterns: Keywords and Corpus Analysis in Language Education. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 10.1075/scl.22Suche in Google Scholar

Selsky, John, André Spicer and Julian Teicher. 2003. “Totally Un-Australian!”: Discursive and Institutional Interplay in the Melbourne Port Dispute of 1997–98. Journal of Management Studies 40(7). 1729–1760.10.1111/1467-6486.00398Suche in Google Scholar

Tang, Liping. 2018. Transitive Representations of China’s Image in the US Mainstream Newspapers: A Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis. Journalism 22(3). 1–17.10.1177/1464884918801116Suche in Google Scholar

van Dijk, Teun A. 1988. News as discourse. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Suche in Google Scholar

van Dijk, Teun A. 1998. Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach. London: Sage.Suche in Google Scholar

Wang, Guofeng. 2017. Discursive Construction of Territorial Disputes: Foreign Newspaper Reporting on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands Dispute. Social Semiotics 27(5). 567–585. 10.1080/10350330.2017.1292621Suche in Google Scholar

Wang, Guofeng and Xueqin Ma. 2021. Were They Illegal Rioters or Pro-democracy Protestors? Examining the 2019–20 Hong Kong Protests in China Daily and the New York Times. Critical Arts 35(2). 85–99. 10.1080/02560046.2021.1925940Suche in Google Scholar

Wodak, Ruth. 2008. Introduction: Discourse Studies – Important Concepts and Terms. In Ruth Wodak and Michal Krzyźanowski (eds.), Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences, 1–29. London: Palgrave.10.1007/978-1-137-04798-4_1Suche in Google Scholar

Wodak, Ruth. 2009. The Semiotics of Racism: A Critical Discourse-Historical Analysis. In Jan Renkema (ed.), Discourse, of course: An Overview of Research in Discourse Studies, 311–326. Amsterdam: Benjamins.10.1075/z.148.29wodSuche in Google Scholar

Wodak, Ruth. 2015. The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London: Sage.10.4135/9781446270073Suche in Google Scholar

Wodak, Ruth, Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl and Karin Liebhart. 2009. The Discursive Construction of National Identity (2nd edn.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Shi, Xu. 2014. Chinese discourse studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Suche in Google Scholar

Yang, Yifan and Xuechen Chen. 2020. Globalism or Nationalism? The Paradox of Chinese Official Discourse in the Context of the COVID-19 Outbreak. Journal of Chinese Political Science 26(3). 89–113.10.1007/s11366-020-09697-1Suche in Google Scholar

Ye, Lei. 2022. Wordless (Version 2.2.0). Github.Suche in Google Scholar

https://github.com/BLKSerene/Wordless. Retrieved March 10, 2022.Suche in Google Scholar

Zhang, Cui and Charles William Meadows. 2012. International Coverage, Foreign Policy, and National Image: Exploring the Complexities of Media Coverage, Public Opinion, and Presidential Agenda. International Journal of Communication 6(1). 76–95.Suche in Google Scholar

Zherebilo, Vasilevna. 2010. Slovar Lingvisticheskich Terminov. Nazran: Izdatelstvo Piligrim. Suche in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2023-07-15
Published in Print: 2023-07-11

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 20.9.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/slaw-2023-0021/html
Button zum nach oben scrollen