AMERICAN UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS’ STATEMENTS ON RUSSIA’S 2022 INVASION OF UKRAINE: А CORPUS-ASSISTED CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Natalia S. Molodcha, natalia.molodcha@gmail.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8467-6408

PhD in Linguistics, Associate Professor, post-doc

Kharkiv University of Humanities “People’s Ukrainian Academy”;

researcher at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/StudLing2024.25.99-127

PDF (ENGLISH)

ABSTRACT

This study examines how top U.S. university Presidents addressed Russia’s 2022 large-scale invasion of Ukraine in their official statements, aiming to uncover rhetorical strategies and the values guiding higher education leaders in crisis communication. The research employed a corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Analysis framework utilizing tools such as Google Trends, sentiment analyzers, and Voyant. This approach enabled a comprehensive research design, incorporating contextual and textual analyses, communication strategy typologies, and interpretative synthesis to derive conclusions and suggest areas for future research. The findings revealed that a key feature of university leaders’ crisis communication during military conflicts is their ability to balance discursive strategies within the identified genre logic, integrating various arguments, rhetorical techniques, and pragmatic patterns. Criticism of the invasion and penalization of the strategic projects are accompanied by statements of support of students and teachers from both conflicting countries as well as appeals for peace-making efforts. The rhetorical strategies include arguments of logos, pathos, and ethos, along with both positive and negative politeness strategies, and a mix of explicit and implicit speech acts. In the appellative genre, statements confronting the invasion utilize various linguistic devices, such as connotative vocabulary, military terminology, proper names as well as grammatical features like negated active voice constructions, and stylistic elements such as personal reminiscences. This type of communication emphasizes conservative and benevolent values, highlighting the strong commitment of the U.S. university leaders to academic integrity while stressing solidarity and collegiality. Additionally, it underscored diplomatic efforts toward achieving peace. The research offers insights into how higher education leadership navigates communication during wartime, contributing to a broader understanding of strategic and crisis communication.

Keywords: academic-administrative discourse, critical discourse analysis, corpus studies, university leaders’ communication, Russia’s 2022 large-scale invasion of Ukraine, pragmatics, rhetorical devices.

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