Discourses on War in the 21st Century: navigating the linguistic landscape of contemporary conflict

This introductory article outlines the conceptual and methodological framework of the special issue Discourses on War in the 21st Century. It explores how language shapes, legitimizes, and contests contemporary armed conflicts through strategic naming, framing, and representation of social actors. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and multimodal approaches, the authors highlight how war discourse is ideologically loaded, performative, and embedded in evolving media ecologies. Key transformations include the hybridization of conflict, the erosion of wartime/peacetime distinctions, and the rise of digital counter-narratives. The contributions examine diverse global cases—from Ukraine and Yemen to India and Brazil—demonstrating how language functions both as a weapon of power and a tool of resistance. The issue calls for interdisciplinary research on the multimodal, transnational, and temporal dimensions of war discourse in the 21st century.