Different cultural languages of resistance: multimodal protest discourse in Ukraine’s revolution of dignity and South Korea’s candlelight movement

Grounded in Cultural Discourse Studies (CDS), this article presents a comparative, multimodal discourse analysis of contemporary social movements in Ukraine and South Korea. Integrating collective action framing and cultural approaches to protest, the study investigates how language, socio-acoustics, and visual symbols function during intense civic mobilization in both nations. By moving beyond Euro-centric and text-exclusive models of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the article employs a cross-cultural and intracultural CDS approach to examine how globalized protest repertoires are reconfigured through local cultural memory and context-specific democratic resistance. The empirical analysis focuses on slogans, rhythmic chants, morpho-linguistic wordplay, activist music, and visual iconographies deployed during the 2013–2014 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity (Euromaidan) and the 2014 South Korean Candlelight Movement following the Sewol Ferry disaster. Findings show how convergent semiotic, linguistic, and socio-acoustic strategies are utilized to frame collective action, construct shared identities, articulate structural grievances, and process historical trauma. Ultimately, by extending CDS to multi-sensory and acoustic modes of protest, this study fosters pluriversality in discourse studies and illustrates how globalized repertoires of dissent intersect with native cultural wisdom and localized struggles for democracy.