War and Language - Russian Invasion of Ukraine in National Political Discourses

Book excerpt: This book focuses on the war in Ukraine and how politicians commented on this issue in the first months after the invasion. The reactions of heads of state to the Russian invasion of Ukraine have varied, even in the democratic world. While an overwhelming rejectionist view was expressed in Western Europe, politicians in some Central and Eastern European have demonstrated a difficulty seeing the Kremlin as the culprit for the war. The main aims of the book are to examine how politicians in selected countries reacted to the war, to identify the main actors of the political discourse and how the political elites formed their positions, to analyze the content of the discourse and how the various supported or opposing positions on the war were formulated, and to examine the linguistic means and strategies employed by the political elite. The authors examined political discourse in Slovakia, Hungary, France, Russia, Spain, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and Austria, and compared and contrasted the features of political discourse in countries with a long democratic tradition with those in Central and Eastern European countries which were under non-democratic regimes before 1989. There seems to be a tendency to push political discourse to a different plane in countries with a communist experience, as we found solid, pro-Russian sentiments in Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic that can attenuate attitudes towards Russian aggression.