Words at War: The Impact of Language on Perceptions and Representations of the Enemy in Russia-Ukraine War

Abstract

Since the beginning of Russia’s “Special Military Operation”, the dividing line between the “war front” and the “words front” has neither been clear nor rigid, due to the linguistic and cultural proximity between the direct actors of the conflict and the total character of hybrid warfare that tends to darken and soften the distinction between the front and the back to the point that the battlefield leaves the fury of the ground to penetrate the minds, the hearts, and the tongues. This paper attempts to highlight the impact of language on perceptions and representations in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war. It analyses the polarization of language and the weaponisation of identity markers with the aim of understanding the process of constructing the enemy from both Russian and Ukrainian parties by identifying the key elements at the foundations of their collective narratives.

Keywords

• russia
• ukraine
• language
• identity
• narrative