Euphemism and dysphemism in the war in Ukraine’s news

Abstract EN

This paper investigates the use of euphemism and dysphemism in the news on the Russia-Ukraine war.

it highlights how each side of the conflict uses language to promote their ideologies and demote the ideologies of others.

the study follows the framework proposed by Allan and Burridge (1991 ; 2006) for data analysis.

the analysis reveals that the Russia-Ukraine war has not been only a war of arms and firepower in the military field, but also a war of words in the fields of politics and media.

the strategic functions of legitimizing and delegitimizing actions are realized by positive representations of oneself and negative representations of others, which are crucial instruments of war propaganda.