Euphemized Concept of War in English Mass-Media Discourse: Events in the East of Ukraine

Abstract

Introduction. The modern stage of the development of English massmedia is characterized by substantial changes in the sphere of euphemizing of many linguistic phenomena of journalistic mass-media discourse. It is necessary to observe the requirements of political correctness -pluralistic linguistic and linguacultural tendencies in the editions of modern English press, in its analytical texts and articles dealing with the military subject. The noted process is marked by the intensity during the last decades and is explained by the ability of euphemisms to be the powerful means of forming new public linguacultural standards especially in presentation of operative information «in live» that causes the substantial changes in British and American mass-media. The evident proof of these changes of media discourse in English speaking media audience has become a new linguistic canon to use veiled units for nomination of problematic phenomena, euphemized terms of argotic type and a general «tender manner of paraphrasing» as for linguistic representation of controversial events which often strengthen the so-called «doublespeak» [2, p. 65].Not for nothing martial journalists in their media reports rather in advance will «see» to «neutralization» and «clearing» of guerrillas, than will assume their murder [3, p. 263]. As the concept and war offences do not come forward as landmarks of tolerance, safety and social prosperity of any society, at the same time they have considerable psycholinguistic, due to using euphemisms, manipulative potential especially in connection with military events including the East of Ukraine.That is why it is necessary to be absorbed in the media essence of the concept WAR as a bright element of speaking differently with the English mass-media audience. Coming from the above mentioned, the aim of our research is to reveal psycholinguistic features of the euphemized concept