Discourses of conflict: Cross-linguistic corpus-assisted comparative discourse study of Russian and Ukrainian parliamentary debates of 2014

The year of 2014 was undeniably one of the most dramatic years in the history of Ukraine. It saw the annexation of Crimea by Russia; the proclamation of two pro-Russian republics - the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) - leading to full-scale armed conflict between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian forces; the failed attempt of a truce and a ceasefire; and continuing disputes between Russia and Ukraine over gas supplies and prices.

Against the backdrop of these events, this study focuses on the parliamentary debates of the two countries in conflict, examining discourses surrounding these contentious events. The aim of this paper is to investigate how these events are framed in debates in the Russian and Ukrainian parliaments. In particular, the following questions are addressed:

1. How different are linguistics features used in the parliamentary debates of countries in conflict when representing the same events?
2. What implications do language differences have for constructing the same vents in two different discourses?

The methodological framework used in this research is a combination of following:

- A comparative cross-linguistic approach
- Discourse analysis; analysis of transitivity features
- Corpus analysis