Open Access | Original Research Journal of Intercultural Communication, 24(2), 2024 | PP: 26– 36 https://doi.org/10.36923/jicc.v24i2.575
Online Pravda’s Communicative Intentions Regarding the War in Ukraine: A CDA-Based Study of the Website’s Opinion Articles Article History: Received: 20-09-2023 Accepted: 21-01-2024 Publication: 10-06-2024 Cite this article as: El-Astal, M., Al-Mutawa, A., M. (2024). Online Pravda’s Communicative Intentions Regarding the War in Ukraine: A CDA-Based Study of the Website’s Opinion Articles. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 24(2), 26-36. doi.org/10.36923/jicc.v24i2.575
©2024 by author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License. Corresponding Author(s): Mohammed El-Astal Department of Mass Communication and Public Relations, Gulf University, Sand 26489, Kingdom of Bahrain. Email: mohd41@hotmail.com
Mohammed El-Astal1
, Abdulaziz Mohammed Al-Mutawa2
Abstract: This research paper, based on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), aimed to uncover how the opinion articles published on Pravda.ru discursively depicted the war in Ukraine and the parties involved. To achieve this, two elements of CDA analysis, namely presupposition and structural opposition, were examined. The first element was scrutinized to determine how Pravda.ru depicted the war in Ukraine (RQ1), while the second element was analyzed to understand how Pravda.ru portrayed the parties involved, whether directly or indirectly, in the war (RQ2). For this study, 83 articles were subject to critical discourse analysis, covering the period from February 25, 2022, to February 24, 2023, the first year of the war. The results obtained from this study indicated that Pravda.ru employed various techniques to construct presuppositions and structural oppositions. Pravda.ru portrayed the war as a 'special military operation' and a 'proxy war.' The former, characterized as a euphemism, aimed to mitigate the impact of the word, presupposing that the events did not constitute aggression against Ukraine. The latter presupposed that Russia was a victim of a conspiracy. Furthermore, the results revealed that Pravda.ru used stigmatization and religious affiliations and terms to construct structural oppositions. Keywords: Presupposition, Structural Opposition, Creating Meaning, Communicative Strategies, Stigmatization, Euphemism
1. Introduction The representation and depiction of people, relationships, events, objects, and actions in the media have always been a significant concern for critical discourse analysts. This significance arises from the assertion that the media utilize communicative strategies that can be ideological (Machin & Mayr 2012). This paper focuses on the referential and representational strategies employed by Pravda.ru concerning the war in Ukraine. Young (2011) categorizes media content into standard narratives, such as features, news articles, and opinion articles, and nonstandard narratives, like letters to the editor. This paper specifically examines opinion articles. An opinion article, also known as an op-ed, offers a judgment or evaluation of a subject or issue and explicitly aims to influence readers' perspectives as determined by the writer or publication (Saleh 2013). A brief review of the literature reveals that it has predominantly explored the potential of print mass media texts, such as news articles (Sheyholislami 2007; Teo 2000), columns (McElmurry 2009), and editorials (Sabah et al., 2023; Matu & Lubbe 2007), with limited attention given to opinion articles. Opinion articles published on Pravda.ru concerning the war in Ukraine remain unexamined. This study seeks to address this gap in the literature by investigating how these opinion articles discursively represent the war in Ukraine and the parties involved, whether directly or indirectly. To achieve this, the study formulates the following two research questions: • How do opinion articles published on Pravda.ru discursively depict the war in Ukraine? • How do opinion articles published on Pravda.ru portray the parties involved in the war in Ukraine? Building upon Machin and Mayr (2012), this paper asserts that manipulation, bias, racial prejudice, and ideologies are discursively constructed, defended, mirrored, and challenged through linguistic resources. The authors contend that language is not merely a system of grammar rules but a semiotic resource set with specific potentials or affordances. Miller (2002) posits that individuals' understanding of their societies and the world depends on how things are discursively presented to them, shaping their choices regarding what to reject, accept, and do.
1 Department of Mass Communication and Public Relations, College of Communication and Media Technologies, Gulf University, Sand 26489, Kingdom of Bahrain. Email: mohd41@hotmail.com 2Department of English Literature and Linguistics, College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar. Email: abdulaziz.almutawa@ qu.edu.qa
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