Appropriation of Concepts in Vladimir Putin’s Narrative about the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Abstract

The article is devoted to the appropriation of concepts in Vladimir Putin’s narrative about the war in Ukraine. The material for analysis consists of the televised address of the President of the Russian Federation concerning the launch of the so-called “special military operation” on 24 February 2022, as well as excerpts from other speeches by the politician addressing the Russian–Ukrainian conflict. The aim of the article is to identify and describe the phenomenon of appropriating concepts denoting values, to demonstrate the use of so-called banner words in Putin’s statements, and to characterize the mechanism of profiling employed in the analyzed texts. The presidential address was examined using the content analysis method, while the description of the pragmatic functions of lexical units (i.e., ways in which particular words are used) was carried out through qualitative analysis. The study tests the hypothesis that Putin’s statements contain elements referring to concepts (values) that simultaneously fit within the linguistic worldview of Russians while also constituting a certain modification of it. In the address, a semantic reinterpretation of already existing concepts can be observed; this reinterpretation participates in the formation of a variant of the linguistic worldview, which we describe as a textual worldview. Due to the point of view adopted by Putin, positive values appear in the context of actions undertaken by Russia and its policies, whereas negative values (anti-values) are attributed to the Western world. The legitimization of military actions is supported here by the communicative strategy of proximization, which involves linguistically presenting distant threats or events as immediate and directly threatening to the audience. The constructed conflict of values between the Western world and Russia is thus portrayed as a danger to Russians that must be resisted.