The NEW COLD WAR concept in English-language political discourse: content, functions, and referential specificity (2022-2025)

The article conducts an interdisciplinary analysis of the actualization and semantic transformation of the NEW COLD WAR concept in English-language political discourse (2022-2025). The work deconstructs the concept’s semantic content, key connotations, and discursive functions within the context of changing international relations. The study aims to explicate the discursive-pragmatic functions and semantic features of the concept in two key contexts: confrontation with Russia and strategic rivalry with China. The research is based on the integration of critical discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, and a comparative approach. The empirical base includes political statements, media texts, and expert publications. The scientific novelty lies in the systematic comparison of two vectors of the concept’s reference, revealing its adaptation to different types of geopolitical confrontation. The results show that the NEW COLD WAR concept is used not as an exact analogy but as a flexible rhetorical tool for framing and legitimation. In the context of Russia, it serves to dramatize an acute crisis, while regarding China, it conceptualizes long-term systemic rivalry. It is established that the primary functions of this tool are the cognitive simplification of multipolar reality, the construction of the image of the “Other”, and the mobilization of public support.