Value system in the Russian concept of vojna ‘war’

This study examines the concept of VOJNA ‘war’ in the Russian language within the framework of Jerzy Bartmiński’s ethnolinguistic theory of stereotypes, values, and cognitive definition. Values are treated as a primary cognitive and sociocultural component, linked to Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus to better understand the dynamics of value systems. Adopting a corpus-based methodology, the analysis is conducted on 2,000 occurrences of VOJNA extracted from the National Corpus of the Russian Language (2000–2020), which were systematically coded using ATLAS.ti software. In addition, the paper offers a comparative analysis of VOJNA and the euphemistic expression SPECIAL’NAJA VOENNAJA OPERACIJA ‘special military operation’, as employed in President Vladimir Putin’s public address of February 24, 2022. By focusing on this terminological shift, the study illustrates how language can be used to manipulate value perception and activate culturally entrenched stereotypes.