SÕJALISTE ÕPPUSTE KEELELINE KONSTRUEERIMINE UUDISVÄÄRTUSLIKUNA

The Discursive Construction of Military Exercises as ‘Newsworthy

Abstract

This article analyses the representations of Russia’s military exercise Zapad 2017 in Estonian online news media from the perspective of the discursive construction of newsworthiness. Drawing on Bednarek & Caple’s novel analytical framework, the authors describe the uses of eight kinds of linguistic resources in news stories covering the Zapad exercise: (1) references to stereotypical attributes or preconceptions, (2) assessments of significance/impact, (3) intensifiers and quantifiers used to establish ‘superlativeness’, (4) negative lexis and references to negative emotions, (5) personalization and references to ‘ordinary people’, (6) linguistic markers of geographical proximity, (7) temporal references used to establish ‘timeliness’, and (8) evaluations of unexpectedness. The results demonstrate how these resources were employed to construct and propagate a confrontation between Russia and NATO, and to incite fear by depicting Zapad 2017 as a military threat to the Baltic States.