Appeal to Precedent Phenomena in Military Advertising: A Linguistic-Pragmatic Aspect

The article is dedicated to the study of the linguopragmatic features of the functioning of precedent phenomena in military advertising discourse. The object of the research is military advertising discourse as a special communicative sphere characterized by a high degree of influencing potential and specific mechanisms for manipulating the collective memory of the target audience, while the subject is the linguopragmatic characteristics of precedent phenomena in military advertising texts. The author examines in detail aspects such as the typology of precedent phenomena (universal, national, socially-precedent), their verbalization mechanisms, and ways of actualization in advertising discourse, as well as the semiotic features of the functioning of precedent units in the context of military identity formation. Special attention is given to analyzing the pragmatic functions of appeals to biblical texts, national cultural symbols, and corporate formulas of the military society in the process of constructing the image of a serviceman and motivating military service. The research is based on the texts of recruiting videos of the U.S. Army series "Be All You Can Be" (2024–2025) and the advertising campaign of special forces "Generation" (2025). The analysis was carried out using intertextual analysis, contextual analysis, and functional-semantic description of precedent units. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that it is the first attempt at a comprehensive linguopragmatic analysis of precedent phenomena in military advertising discourse considering their typological characteristics, functional specificity, and modes of verbalization. The results of the study showed that the appeal to precedent phenomena serves as a key mechanism of linguopragmatic influence in military advertising. The main pragmatic functions of precedent phenomena were identified: the sacralization of military labor through appeals to biblical texts, the construction of historical continuity through references to key events in national history, the legitimation of military service through links to documents of statehood, and the formation of an elite image of the military society through socially-precedent phenomena. It was established that precedent phenomena in military advertising predominantly function in the form of implicit allusions, aimed at the cultural competence of the recipient and activating the collective memory of the national-linguistic and professional communities.

precedent phenomena, intertextuality, military discourse, military advertising, recruiting campaign, linguistic pragmatics, collective memory, precedent text, societal precedent, media discourse