DOI: https://doi.org/10.36719/2789-6919/64/77-89
Framing the Lachin Corridor Crisis: Selective Discursive Convergence in Azerbaijani, Chinese,
and Institutional Communication
Liu Yousha 
Abstract. This article examines how the 2022–2023 Lachin Corridor crisis was framed in Azerbaijani official / news communication, Chinese foreign-policy and news-agency communication, and international institutional texts. The purposive corpus comprises 25 texts, with the main analytical window running from December 2022 to August 2023 and limited contextual material outside that period. Using qualitative frame analysis, the study compares problem definition, causal attribution, evaluation, remedies, agency visibility, evidential calibration, humanitarian salience, toponymy, and intertextual authority. Azerbaijani communication shifted from environmental-resource framing to sovereignty-security framing after the April 2023 checkpoint and then to regulated-access humanitarian framing. Chinese communication was less episode-specific and recast the dispute through dialogue, international law, territorial integrity, and regional stability. International institutions increasingly foregrounded freedom of movement and humanitarian access, though their mandates produced different evidential registers. The article conceptualizes this pattern as selective discursive convergence: overlap in high-level norms without equivalent agreement on causal narratives or remedies. It also identifies salience asymmetry and strategic attenuation as useful dimensions of third-party foreign-policy communication.
Keywords: Lachin Corridor, Azerbaijan; China, political communication, framing, strategic narratives, sovereignty, humanitarian access, South Caucasus