Semantic Unities for the Concept of “War in Ukraine” (based on English, German and Ukrainian Languages)

Abstract

The war in Ukraine, just like any other historical event, is an impetus for the creation of certain semantic unities to denote new phenomena. The wide media representation of events in Ukraine in the mass media both at home and abroad requires a particularly careful attitude to the terminology of war to prevent incorrect interpretations of events and phenomena. That is why it is important not only to specify the Ukrainian-language terminology for the phenomena of war, but also to compare it with the available terms in other languages.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the trends in the formation and use of semantic unities to denote the concept of «war in Ukraine» based on scientific and popular science articles published in Ukrainian, English, and German-language sources in 2022–2024.

Tracking and analyzing the processes of formation and use of semantic unities to denote the concept of «war in Ukraine» is relevant from the point of view of linguistic and semantic research, as these processes provide the scientific basis for «term creation work» aimed at creating new Ukrainian terms for foreign language terms. 

While journalism should be based on the principles of objectivity and neutrality, we believe that international journalists should not and should not remain neutral in their assessment of current events in Ukraine. In our opinion, the most politically correct from the point of view of legal assessment of the situation in Ukraine are semantic unities with a connotative component of negative assessment that are widely used in English-language media.

Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has given rise to the creation and use of certain semantic unities that contain negative evaluative connotations, are used in certain contexts and reflect the sharply negative attitude of the world community to the aggressive actions of the invading country.