Special military operation and Italian mainstream media discourse: corpus-based analysis of Corriere della Sera discourse on anti-Russian economic sanctions in March-June 2022

Authors
R.R. Asmyatullin
Affiliation
(1) RUDN University, (2) Plekhanov Russian University of Economics
Issue 48
Pages
29-53

After the beginning of Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine crisis in the relationships between Russia and the Western countries reached a tipping point. Massive severe sanctions were applied by the US, European Union and some other countries as a response to the Military Operation. The role of media in framing the public opinion in this crisis cannot be underestimated. This paper aims to analyse Italian mainstream media discourse on anti-Russian economic sanctions. This article analyzes the way the economic sanctions imposed by Western countries is linguistically framed by Corriere della Sera, one of the largest Italian media. Corriere della Sera is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan. The content of the newspaper can be described as a liberal-conservative political focus; however, given the generally balanced discourse of the Corriere della Sera, the author settled on this media. Particular attention is paid to the concept of cognitive warfare, which can be defined as the use of public opinion as a weapon. The corpus consists of 45 articles devoted mainly to the economic aspect of the sanctions; articles related to political or other aspects were not taken into account. The methodology of this study is presented using a quantitative approach and a qualitative approach. To select units for further analysis, a quantitative approach is used (tools of corpus linguistics). A qualitative approach (critical discourse analysis) is used to interpret the data. It is noted that the number of materials about anti-Russian economic sanctions was greater at the beginning of the analyzed period. The analysis of the corpus shows the tendencies of othering of Russia in Corriere della Sera discourse. The acute stage of the confrontation between the West and Russia, which began in 2022, is described by a white and black dichotomy between the collective West and Russia, especially at the beginning of the period.

For citation

Asmyatullin, R.R. (2022). Special military operation and Italian mainstream media discourse: corpus-based analysis of Corriere della Sera discourse on anti-Russian economic sanctions in March-June 2022. Issues of Applied Linguistics, 48, 29-53. https://doi.org/10.25076/vpl.48.02

This artiсle is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.