International relations can be studied with instruments of different sciences applied: history, political science, law, economics or sociology. Each of these disciplines has its own methodological traditions, yet all of them must take into account the fundamental reality which is constituted by discourse in its written, oral, or any other semiotic form. The article presented acquaints with the methods of studying discourse, adopted in modern science. To give an example of their application, the author analyzes the treatment of the Chechen war in four editorials of leading American newspapers. It is demonstrated how the application of linguistic analysis combined with methods of cognitive psychology brings such understanding of texts, which exceeds the bounds of their superficially-intuitive comprehension and reveals the implications they contain. One more truth also testified to in the article is that similar methods can serve as reliable bearing while studying analogous sources in other fields of social research.