Russian-Ukrainian War Discourse: A Corpus Case Study

Abstract

This paper explores two corpora groups targeting opposing perspectives of newspaper agencies in
the West and the Arab world on the Russian-Ukrainian War. The study analyzes news reports from three
leading media agencies: BBC and CNN (U-Corpus), reflecting Western Ukraine-supporting attitudes, and
Russian Today (RT) as thematic images of Russia-supporting and anti-West standing. The second corpus
group shows the opposition between Al-Jazeera's support for Ukraine and Al-Manar's opposition as the
political opposition in Lebanon. The data is analyzed using AntConc to detect linguistic patterns in
discourses, including lexical and semantic categories. The findings reveal significant differences in the
distribution and frequency of target patterns, indicating distinct types of 'sensational' dimensions and
political images (nationalism, international position, economy, etc.) used to emphasize support or
opposition against its political side in the war. In particular, each corpus maintains lexical consistency in
using linguistic patterns in a specific political dimension.
Keywords: Corpus, Russia, Ukraine, War, News agencies