AGREEMENT VS PRESS RELEASE: LEXICAL CONTRAST IN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE OFFICIAL WARTIME COMMUNICATION

Abstract

The article presents a contrastive lexical analysis of English-language official bilateral agreements and official pressreleases reporting the same or directly related signing events in wartime discourse. The relevance of the study lies inthe need to distinguish two related but functionally different forms of official communication: the agreement as a legalinstitutionaltext that codifies obligations, and the press release as a public-interpretative text that explains the meaningof the event to a wider audience. Unlike studies focused on the general linguo-cognitive characteristics of official businessdocuments or on the quantitative operationalization of their perlocutionary potential, this article concentrates specifically on the genre-conditioned lexical contrast between legal codification and public framing. The material of the study includesthe official English-language texts of Ukraine’s security agreements with the United Kingdom, Poland, Croatia, and France,the corresponding official signing news items and statements, and the G7 Joint Declaration of Support for Ukraine asa comparative example of a public diplomatic formula. The findings show that agreements tend to foreground institutionaland procedural units such as Participants, cooperation, capabilities, assistance, implementation, and long-term support,whereas press releases more actively employ dynamic, concrete, and evaluative units such as enables, interception,victory, ambitious, and practical consequences. Therefore, the agreement–press release pair is a productive object forEnglish lexicology because it demonstrates how one event receives two different lexical realizations depending on genre,addressee, and communicative purpose.