The discursive formation of British national identity: the lexical aspect

Abstract

British national identity has been in the zone of constant study by scientists for a long period of time, but after Brexit, interest in this topic has increased significantly. The British nation, especially the part of it that was on the side of the Eurosceptics, after Brexit was aimed at strengthening the British identity and completely destroying any influence of globalization on the British nation. But despite the expectations of the British, many scientists agree that the national British identity is still in crisis. Thus, the object of this research is the culture-bound lexical elements of the English-language political discourse of online mass media, and the purpose is to identify the current state of British national identity through the analysis of the words-realities of the British political discourse. Current works (not older than five years) by Russian and foreign scientists in the fields of political discourse and national British identity form the methodological basis of the research. The analysis of the culture-bound lexical elements of English-language political discourse is carried out on the basis of online media texts for the period January–April 2024, which makes the study innovative and reflects the trends of modern linguistic science. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the national British identity is in a state of crisis. Brexit and subsequent events gave the British nation hope for the ascent of national identity and the return of its former imperial greatness, but analyzing the current articles of British online publications on political topics, it becomes evident that international processes still prevail over the British identity. The further perspective of the research lies in the field of studying the discursive formation of British identity from the point of view of syntactic, grammatical, and social aspects.