PhD project
Russian Narratives of War: Argumentative-Rhetorical Strategies in Russian-Language Propaganda on the War against Ukraine
This PhD project investigates the argumentative-rhetorical strategies by which the Russian state attempts to substantiate the legitimacy of its war against Ukraine.
- Duration
- 2025 - 2030
- Contact
- Levina de Wolf
On 24 February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the start of the so-called “special military operation”. This entailed the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the buildup towards which started in 2014. The Russian government and various state-affiliated media channels have been constructing and conveying narratives, which argue for the necessity and legitimacy of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. These narratives for instance include the argumentation that Ukraine is ruled by a fascist and neo-Nazi regime, that people in the country are facing oppression and even genocide, and that the Ukrainian government is factually controlled by Western countries and alliances, which use Ukraine as a springboard in their attempt to break the power of Russia.
This PhD project aims to foster insight in how the Russian government tries to garner support among domestic audiences for its military actions and the annexation of Ukrainian territories, while it also considers the nature of (Russian) propaganda and war narratives more generally. Rather than on the content, this project concentrates on the form of Russia’s war legitimisations. It employs a systematic qualitative analysis of Russian-language propaganda texts to uncover the strategies by which the Kremlin seeks to justify its war against Ukraine. In doing so, this research concentrates on these strategies’ argumentative-rhetorical dimension, a dimension which has been underexposed in existing studies and will here be examined through the lens of pragma-dialectics. This is a systematic theory of argumentation, which allows for the incorporation of rhetorical elements in the analysis of argumentative texts. The argumentative and rhetorical dimension specifically come together in the pragma-dialectical concept of strategic maneuvering, which entails that every argumentative move involves a balancing act between, on the one hand, the aim to convince one’s opponents with an argumentation on reasonable grounds, and, on the other hand, the aim to “win” the difference of opinion by being as rhetorically effective as possible.