The Discursive Construction Of National Identity

How do we construct national identities in discourse? Which topics, which discursive strategies and which linguistic devices are employed to construct national sameness and uniqueness on the one hand, and differences to other national collectives on the other hand? The Discursive Construction of National Identity analyses discourses of national identity in Europe with particular attention to Austria.In the tradition of critical discourse analysis, the authors analyse current and on-going transformations in the self-and other definition of national identities using an innovative interdisciplinary approach which combines discourse-historical theory and methodology and political science perspectives. Thus, the rhetorical promotion of national identification and the discursive construction and reproduction of national difference on public, semi-public and semi-private levels within a nation state are analysed in much detail and illustrated with a huge amount of examples taken from many genres (speeches, focus-groups, interviews, media, and so forth). In addition to the critical discourse analysis of multiple genres accompanying various commemorative and celebratory events in 1995, this extended and revised edition is able to draw comparisons with similar events in 2005. The impact of socio-political changes in Austria and in the European Union is also made transparent in the attempts of constructing hegemonic national identities.

This book analyses discourses of national identity in Europe with particular attention to Austria.

This book looks at the discursive construction of European identities in a variety of institutional and non-institutional contexts and through a variety of social and political actors. Its multilevel and interdisciplinary approach - rooted in the Discourse-Historical tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis - allows for a comparison of identity constructions at different levels of Europe's social and political organisation and in different modes of communication. The book analyses discourses as diverse as those of the EU politicians, of Europe's national media as well as of migrants living in Europe. It offers a set of integrated models and analytical procedures which bring to the fore the inherent dynamism and complexity of both 'bottom-up' and 'top-down' European identity constructions.

The discursive construction of identity is often under the control of the dominant forces in society and frequently results in forms of manipulation and abuse. This awareness led to the celebration of the First International Conference on CDA (València 2004), where over three-hundred academics working in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis became actively engaged in this important issue. The seven studies included in this volume have been selected as representative of those areas of human experience that have been given most intellectual attention and considered to be in fact in need for critical unravelling. Ethnic categorization in multicultural classrooms, patriotic discourse construction in Chinese readers, the denial of Palestinian identity in schoolbooks, the diverse constructions of European identities, Arabs constructing themselves on the worldwide web, identity construction in sexual assault trials, the representations of a dangerous ‘other’ in cases of PLWHAs, are the contextual perspectives embraced in this book to account for forms of power abuse in the discursive construction of identities.

How do democratic and pluralistic societies cope with traumatic events in their past? What strategies and taboos are employed to reconstruct wars, revolutions, torturing, mass killings and genocide in a way to make their contradiction to basic human rights and values invisible? This interdisciplinary volume analyzes in detail for the first time, in multiple genres, the history and image of the "German Wehrmacht" and the debates in Austria and Germany surrounding two highly contested exhibitions about the war crimes of the German Wehrmacht during WWII.

This volume brings together specialists from a range of disciplines to discuss the discursive construction of ethnic, national and regional identities and analyse how specific identity discourses condition and constrain knowledge and action with regard to various socio-political issues in Europe.

How do people construct collective identity during profound societal transformations? This volume examines the discursive construction of identity related to important national holidays in nine countries of Central Europe and the Balkans: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia. The chapters focus on the decades during which these countries moved from communism towards democracy and a market economy. This transition saw revivals of national values and a new significance of regional and transnational ties, entangled with negotiations of national identity that have been particularly lively in discourse concerning national holidays. The chapters apply discourse analysis in addition to approaches from history, sociology, political science, and anthropology. All of the analyses make use of empirical material in the Slavic languages, including newspaper articles, interviews and other media contributions, sermons, addresses, and speeches by members of the political elite.

How is history represented? As just a record of the past, as a part of a present identity or as future goals? This book explores how historical contents and narratives are presented in school textbooks and other cultural productions (museums, monuments, etc) and also how they are understood by students, in the context of increasing globalization. In these contemporary conditions, the relation between history learning processes, in and out of school, and the construction of national identities presents an ever more important topic. It is being studied by looking at the appropriation of historical narratives, which are frequently based on the official history of a nation state. Most of the chapters in this volume are educational studies about how the learning of history takes place in school settings of different countries such as Canada, France, Germany, Latin America, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. Covering such a broad sample of cultural and national contexts, they provide a rich reflection on history as a subject related to patriotism, cosmopolitanism, both or neither.