Linguistic Ambiguity in News Headlines of Russia-Ukraine War

This study explores the presence of linguistic ambiguity in a specific register, namely, the news headlines of The Guardian covering the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict from 2023 to 2024. The objectives of the study are to identify instances of ambiguity in the selected headlines, to analyze these ambiguous constructs through Kreidler’s model to examine their potential interpretations. The results revealed the presence of 15 ambiguous headlines were categorized according to the model. Within this subset, 5 headlines were lexically ambiguous, 5 exhibited syntactic ambiguity, and 5 were characterized by referential ambiguity. The findings have further demonstrated that syntactic ambiguity of the surface type was serving as a primary catalyst for diplomatic tensions, exacerbating existing conflict, and fostering an atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion at the international scale. While the study offers valuable guidance to practitioners of language, helping them gain a deeper understanding of English language ambiguity, further research is still required in this area