LINGUISTIC FRAMING OF UKRAINE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

The present article examines the linguistic representation of Ukraine in the political speeches of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump delivered between 2022 and 2025, a period defined by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its consequences for transatlantic political communication. The study addresses a gap in existing scholarship, which has analysed the rhetorical strategies of each speaker individually but has not subjected their representations of the same geopolitical subject to systematic contrastive linguistic analysis. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and framing theory, the article offers a three-level comparative analysis (lexical, grammatical, and stylistic) of a corpus comprising 6 speeches totalling approximately 40,000 words. The analytical framework identifies 13 linguistic mechanisms, quantified across 62 Harris fragments and 44 Trump fragments. The quantitative data demonstrate that the two speakers construct fundamentally divergent discursive frames. Harris’s discourse instantiates a Solidarity-based Frame characterised by value-laden vocabulary, sustained agency language that represents Ukrainians as active historical subjects, and an elevated register marked by metaphor. Trump’s discourse represents Ukraine within a Pragmatics-based Frame defined by transactional vocabulary, personalised I-constructions, and a confrontational register. The data confirm that these differences are systematic across the entire corpus and structurally inverted at every analytical level, demonstrating that political discourse actively constructs geopolitical reality.