Language, power and identity: discursive construction of post-Revolution national identity in Tunisia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study investigates post-revolution discursive identity formation in Tunisia. It uses insights from the discourse-historical approach to analyze five speeches given by the Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed since his election in 2019. Focusing on the referential and argumentative strategies employed in these speeches, the analysis reveals that the President constantly appeals to a unique Tunisian identity that reconciles Tunisia’s position between the East and the West and between Arabness, Africanism, Islam and Mediterranean cosmopolitism. The analysis indicates that in the context of an unstable post-revolution environment in Tunisia and in the MENA region as a whole, Kaïs Saïed tends to invoke the alleged importance of collective identity, be it on the basis of religion, history, language or culture, or by stressing the importance of affiliation with an ethnic group, a nation or an ummah.