{"id":551,"date":"2025-06-22T20:46:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T20:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/?p=551"},"modified":"2025-06-23T17:28:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T17:28:20","slug":"corecon-contribution-to-res-rhetorica-journal-releasing-a-thematic-issue-on-mediated-rhetoric-of-recent-conflicts-june-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/corecon-contribution-to-res-rhetorica-journal-releasing-a-thematic-issue-on-mediated-rhetoric-of-recent-conflicts-june-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"CORECON contribution to Res Rhetorica journal: Releasing a thematic issue on \u201cMediated Rhetoric of Recent Conflicts\u201d (June 2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This blogpost is an adaptation of the introduction to the thematic issue entitled \u201cMediated Rhetoric of Recent Conflicts\u201d released in June 2025 as issue 2 of volume 12 of Res Rhetorica \u2013 a Web-of-Science and Scopus-indexed journal of the Polish Rhetoric Society. The blogpost explains the motivation for the issue and presents its most interesting contents.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue has been co-edited by Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska and Ecaterina Ilis and took over a year to develop. The call invited authors to explore the rhetorical dimensions of conflict discourses in contemporary media landscapes. It aims to show how established rhetorical categories<\/strong> and analytic protocols could be used to make sense of the mechanisms of today\u2019s conflicts, including the war in Ukraine<\/strong>. In an era of hybrid warfare, disinformation, and polarized media ecosystems, understanding how conflicts are rhetorically constructed and mediated is crucial for both scholars and practitioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Importantly, the researchers from the CORECON project, with their expert focus on language and rhetoric, journalism and mediation, and politics and security studies, have contributed to the creation of the issue as authors, reviewers, editors and popularizers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can find the issue and download all the articles as OA Creative Commons licensed material here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Released in June 2025, the issue offers empirical analyses of rhetorical, linguistic and semiotic constructions of most recent conflicts in Europe, South America, the Middle East and in the dispersed spaces of social media platforms. It shows how conflict is shaped by the political and cultural contexts and the affordances of communication technologies (including online and social media platforms). The articles accepted for publication employ a range of methodologies, from discourse-historical approaches and cognitive discourse analysis to semiotics and computational rhetoric. This reflects the multifaceted nature of rhetorics of conflict representation and performance in contemporary discourses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hence, the thematic issue aims to do justice to the variety of media contexts and the intelligibility and coherence of conflict studies, honoring the rhetorical orientation of the journal as a common denominator<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue opens with a study by Piotr Cap<\/strong>, who combines critical cognitive discourse analysis and rhetorical theory to explore legitimization strategies that Polish politicians employ during election campaigns in his article \u201cConstructing alternative futures of Poland: (de)legitimizing conflict, populist stance and liberal politics in leadership and campaign discourse.\u201d The dynamic of an essentially conflict-charged speech rhetoric of the populists and the liberals is explored in view of the effectiveness of rhetorical maneuvers that respective leaders use to project and justify alternative future visions of Poland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cThe myth of the Israel Defense Forces through the lens of critical rhetoric\u201d Micha\u0142 Mokrzan and Marta Songin-Mokrzan<\/strong> look closely at the posts published on the Israeli Defence Force\u2019s official Facebook profile between October 2023 and January 2025, tracing selected rhetorical devices that construct the myth of the IDF as a moral organization. This includes persuasion through ethos, character and euphemisms. They draw on Foucault\u2019s discourse theory, Barthesian semiology and Burke\u2019s critical rhetoric to argue for the need of constant demystification and demythologization of official discourses, especially if they glorify or normalize violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the scope of the CORECON project, Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska and Jan Paszczy\u0144ski<\/strong> analyze salient argumentative schemes that are characteristic of, but also problematic for, the Polish public deliberations on the acceptable degrees and forms of assistance provided to Ukraine and Ukrainians during the war. \u201cRhetorical and linguistic devices in the argumentation against supporting Ukraine in the radicalized Polish media sphere\u201d reports on an analysis of a purposive sample of online materials posted by radical opponents to Poland\u2019s aid to Ukraine. The study identifies dominant topoi<\/em>, fallacies and rhetorical maneuvers that tend to be employed to make these claims appealing, especially to disenfranchised publics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a related manner, Marcin Deutschmann and J\u0119drzej Olejniczak<\/strong>, in \u201cUnwanted encounters: Anti-Ukrainian rhetoric in the social media reception of migrants by the Polish far-right\u201d use the CORECON corpus to measure the intensity and scope of rhetorical resources that were recruited to express negative sentiment about Ukrainian immigrants in Poland by selected far-right organizations and politicians. The study combines quantitative approaches to rhetoric \u2013 including the tools that are used to automate the measures of hateful speech \u2013 with a detailed analyses of anti-immigrant topoi<\/em> applied strategically for breeding division and resentment against Ukrainians while capitalizing on fear and sense of injustice among Poles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By first operationalizing the concept of \u201cthe rhetoric of anger\u201d Magdalena Mateja<\/strong> provides us with \u201cA case study of Polish farmers\u2019 protests against the import of grain from Ukraine.\u201d The study employs several methodological approaches from the intersection of social sciences and humanities, including discourse analysis, semiotic analysis, and action analysis to describe in detail the various dimensions of persuasive communication during farmer protest actions, as they were being reported by the popular general news portal rmf24.pl throughout 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two articles relate to the rhetorical devices and argumentation used by Russian propaganda in the ongoing war against Ukraine. \u201cMore than words: Argumentative structures as a tool of disinformation in Sputnik Mundo\u201d by Anna Nowakowska-G\u0142uszak<\/strong> analyzes operators and connectives in articles published on the Spanish-language pro-Kremlin news portal Sputnik Mundo. The study demonstrates that manipulation is not only a matter of content but also of discourse structure. Categories derived from Anscombre and Ducrot\u2019s theory of argumentation in language are used to look at selected articles covering NATO\u2019s Steadfast Defender exercises in Europe in order to show how Russian propagandas challenge official Western narratives, delegitimize NATO\u2019s actions, and promote a Kremlin-aligned interpretation of geopolitical events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile Nadia Gerga\u0142o-D\u0105bek<\/strong> follows the discourse-historical approach and applies the concept of mental models to show how certain recurring topoi<\/em> of \u201cartificiality,\u201d \u201cprimitiveness\u201d and \u201chostility\u201d are used by Russians to diminish the status of the Ukrainian language. \u201cLanguage as a front of conflict: Russian discourse on the Ukrainian language in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war\u201d exemplifies numerous instances of depreciations and delegitimizations of Ukrainian linguistic sovereignty and national identity, which can be perceived as a coordinated campaign fitting in Russia\u2019s neo-imperialist strategy of subjugation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two articles that attend to how selected Polish media outlets engage in conflict propagation in the context of Polish political coverage. Joanna Szylko-Kwas<\/strong> contrasts news bulletins Wiadomo\u015bci <\/em>and Fakty <\/em>to spotlight polarization and politicization of television newscasting. In \u201cTraitor, cheater, coward: The leaders of the two largest political parties in television newscasts during the 2023 general election campaign,\u201d she looks at the respective portrayals of party leaders and identifies the biased schemas, frames and narratives that Polish televised news outlets employ when they engage in campaigning rather than in reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a different context, Karolina Brylska<\/strong> applies Burkean rhetoric to interrogate the news content aired by four major Polish TV stations to account for \u201cStrategic narratives in Polish TV news coverage of the 2018 Polish-Israeli diplomatic crisis.\u201d The study demonstrates conflicted storylines \u2013 or a political gameplay \u2013 where some reporters assert Poland\u2019s duty to defend truth and its reputation on the global stage and others maneuver around the issue of challenging Polish-Jewish relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the two articles in the \u201cVaria\u201d section of this issue, one can read about unique strands of rhetorical research, such as the backstage of preparing American presidential addresses and other official statements. Iwona \u015awi\u0105tczak-Wasilewska<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cSpeechwriting in and beyond the White House: Selected international perspectives on aspects of speechwriting in government and business\u201d explores interview data that prove that contemporary speechwriters\u2019 communication expertise and media awareness remain vital to shaping and conveying policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the only Polish-language contribution to his issue, Natalia Kowalska-Elkader<\/strong> analyzes three radio broadcasts devoted to different armed conflicts from various historical periods, using the concepts of \u201cthick\u201d and \u201cthin\u201d representation in the context of sonic rhetoric. \u201cThe war\u2019s echoes thunder in my ears: Towards the rhetoric of sound\u201d shows how repetition, cacophony, and the use of low frequencies, which enhance the emotional and material impact, shape both aesthetics and semantics of radio accounts of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue closes with a student \u201creaction\u201d essay in which Oskar Tomala<\/strong> revisits the latest Munich Security Conference and explains the rhetorical devices resorted to by U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance in his speech on the challenges facing global security. The analysis focuses on the rhetoric of fear, the use of anecdotes, implied information and strategic vagueness, and in-group\/out-group framing and explains how Vance positions himself as a moral authority, criticizing European politics in a purported defence of democratic values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopefully, this collection not only advances scholarly debates on mediated rhetoric and conflict but also encourages critical reflection on the ethical and societal implications of conflict communication in a globally connected media sphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Text by Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska and Ecaterina Ilis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blogpost is an adaptation of the introduction to the thematic issue entitled \u201cMediated Rhetoric of Recent Conflicts\u201d released in June 2025 as issue 2 of volume 12 of Res Rhetorica \u2013 a Web-of-Science and Scopus-indexed journal of the Polish Rhetoric Society. The blogpost explains the motivation for the issue and presents its most interesting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":552,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,10,69,43],"tags":[75,7,74,19],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ecaterina-ilis","category-katarzyna-molek-kozakowska","category-publication","category-research","tag-media","tag-politics","tag-rhetoric","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":570,"href":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions\/570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/corecon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}