INTEGRATIVE METHODOLOGY FOR THE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE OFFICIAL AND BUSINESS DOCUMENTS IN WARTIME DISCOURSE (2022–2025)

Abstract

The article proposes an integrative methodology for analyzing the linguo-cognitive characteristics of English-language official documents in the wartime discourse of 2022–2025. It shows how the combination of cognitive semantics (conceptual metaphor theory, frame semantics), critical discourse analysis, and legal-genre studies makes it possible to formalize and quantitatively assess the perlocutionary effect of official texts. The perlocutionary effect is operationalized through five metrics: MSI (weighted sentence-level intensity of the modalities must/shall/will/may), TCH (temporal commitment horizon: fixed or multi-year terms vs open-ended formulae), CRL (presence of rapid-coordination triggers such as “within 24 hours”), EDI (density of enumerative clauses), and FCAF (frequency of frame-bearing lemmas support/commitment/security/deterrence/reform/recovery per 1,000 words). The analytical pipeline includes text normalization, segmentation, lemmatization, pattern matching by regular expressions, and reliability checks of annotation; reproducibility is ensured through CSV exports and versioning of processing scripts. The corpus comprises 10 authentic documents, covering key intergovernmental security arrangements (1–4), financial instruments (5–7), and sectoral memoranda of understanding (MoUs) (8–10), all drawn from official machinereadable sources (HTML/PDF/DOCX). The analysis reveals a hybridization of legal precision and cognitive modelling (metaphorization, framing) and highlights the role of the modalities shall/will/must/may and temporal markers (“10 years”, “100 years”, “for as long as it takes”) in constructing commitments and constraining possible interpretations. The findings demonstrate distinct genre-specific profiles (security agreements with higher MSI and TCH and CRL≈1; financial instruments with the highest EDI and a dominance of support/recovery/reform frames; MoUs with lower MSI and intermediate EDI), outline practical implications for drafters and translators, and indicate avenues for further corpusbased comparison (pre-war vs wartime texts; English- vs Ukrainian-language versions; sensitivity analyses).