Precedent Phenomena as a Means of Actualizing Institutional Memory in Contemporary Russian-Language Military Discourse

This study examines the functions of precedent phenomena in the activation of institutional memory within the military community and their dependence on the register characteristics of communication in contemporary Russian-language military discourse (across both official and unofficial registers). The purpose of this research is to identify the ways in which references to culturally significant past events contribute to the interpretation of current events. The study is based on public speeches, interviews, and publications from military-themed Telegram channels. It compares the uses of historical names, event designations, literary allusions, and fixed expressions. The focus is not on the historical references as facts, but rather on how they operate within speech: how recognizable cultural content (names, events, quotes, and established formulas) is reinterpreted and used to make sense of contemporary situations. Contextual and comparative analyses are employed, with individual instances of precedent as the unit of analysis. For each context, cultural source, type of phenomenon, means of linguistic activation, and function within the message are identified. The register affiliation is determined based on the status of the communicators, genre, and communicative objectives. Precedent references are distinguished from historical mentions and normative references. The novelty of this research lies in the comparative analysis of the functions of precedent phenomena across different registers of military discourse, taking into consideration the preservation and contextual reinterpretation of cultural content. The examined contexts reveal integrating, argumentative, normative, memorial, and evaluative-interpretative functions. Changes in function are associated with temporal references, evaluative surrounding conditions, and the placement of references within argumentative structures. Reinterpretation occurs both through the transformation of linguistic form and by maintaining fixed expressions. The results are applicable to the annotation of military texts and the analysis of professional communication. This study systematically demonstrates, for the first time, how precedent phenomena function as mechanisms for activating institutional memory in military discourse, operating not merely as references to the past but as dynamic units that alter function depending on context and register.