The Phenomenon of Psychological Operations as a Concept and Discourse (Based on Security Linguistic Cultures of the NATO and the Russian Federation)

Abstract

Objective. The purpose of this paper is to present an argument for the status of the phenomenon of psychological operations as a concept and discourse.
 Materials and Methods. To achieve the most plausible results, the following integrated methods have been used: semantic and cognitive analysis – to study deep semantic connotations, which are fundamentally different in the linguistic cultures of the NATO and the Russian Federation; concept analysis – to study the regulatory role of the concept PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS in interstate relations;discourse analysis – to study the consistently situational institutional discourse of psychological operations as a tool for constructing social reality.
 Results. The discourse of NATO Doctrines has a practical dimension: it focus on developing a positive Alliance image, focusing attention on the diversity of target audiences, building confidence, and supporting military commanders’ actions in relation to foreign people. The discourse of the Russian Federation is destructively oriented: the strategies of escaping international responsibility, ignoring diplomatic relations, causing damage comparable to effects of hostilities are exposed as essential. The hidden meanings of the concept PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS have been identified, namely: such semantic components as “promoting strategic goals to restore and reinforce legitimacy, to alleviate suffering, to maintain and restore public order” are employed in NATO doctrines, whereas the sources of the Russian Federation contain “attack under false colours for the purpose of destabilization and disorientation”. Lacunarity is caused by the moral and ethnic perception of the concept PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS in the linguistic cultures under study.
 Conclusions. The discourse of psychological operations is a system; the directions of its deployment in the studied linguistic cultures are fundamentally incongruent. Representation of the concept PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS in security discourses demonstrates invariant images of the world, correlated with national mind-sets.