Demonstration of the politician’s national identity with the help of culture-bound elements

Abstract

The article is devoted to the actualization of national identity of a political individual subject with the help of linguistic means (based on the government statements of the former German Chancellor A. Merkel). Given that the construction of national identity takes place in the language, it is proposed to consider culture-bound elements as the main marker of national identity. The purpose of the study is to reveal the relationship between the demonstration of ethnic identity in the speech of an individual political subject and the use of language means that reflect national specifics. General scientific (description, continuous sampling method) and linguistic (linguoculturological and discursive analysis) methods were used in the research. Statistical methods (Chi-square, Cramer’s coefficient) were used to obtain more accurate results and test the hypothesis about the presence or absence of a relationship between language markers and the demonstration of the politician’s national identity. The material of the study was the texts of 34 government statements of the former chancellor of Germany A. Merkel in the period between 2014 and 2021. The chronological framework is determined by extralinguistic factors (the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis and the end of the chancellor’s term), which must be taken into account when analyzing political discourse. This genre of political communication has not been subjected to thorough linguistic analysis, so this study has a certain novelty. The selected lexical units were classified according to the onomastic principle (toponyms, anthroponyms, polytonyms, official names, geortonyms, ethnonyms) and divided into two categories: units denoting German and other realities. A total of 1902 units and 5823 cases of use. The results obtained confirm the hypothesis and indicate the presence of a dependence, but indicate a weak degree of correlation. The proposed approach seems to be innovative, since it allows us to comprehensively consider the phenomenon of identity and can help to correctly interpret and demonstrate the intentions of a political individual subject in public speeches.