Construction Of National Identity Research Articles

Memory and Enculturation

It may be safely stated at present that the triad of past, tradition and memory has accelerated at an incredible pace. Memory seems to keep the events of the past alive for ever shorter periods of time. Rites, memories and remembrance are now handed down as written sources in the form of textbooks. How does the narrative of the teaching aids that have emerged in the 21st century then evolve and what are/have been their achievements in the construction of national identity? How do hon- és népismeret [Our homeland and its people] textbooks function as tools for building a national community? The subject hon- és népismeret taught in grade schools examines and discusses national culture and the processes of cultural reconstruction in a rather specific cross-section. Beyond exploring the interdependence and interlocking of the context and practice of ‘knowledge creation’/‘knowledge transmission’ in primary educational institutions, this paper aims to explore some salient observations on its generational relationship to memory. The importance of this subject and textbook is/has been undeniable, both as a tool for national and social community-building on the one hand and as a tangible archive of the process of heritage transmission/patrimonization on the other hand.

A critical discourse study of cultural and national identity (re)construction in Taiwanese high school EFL textbooks

ABSTRACT In foreign language textbooks, cultural representations embedded in texts and images not only facilitate the acquisition of linguistic knowledge but also construct ethnic or political identities. Over the past century, the mainstream ideology in Taiwan has changed due to the rotation of ruling parties and generational shifts. This change is also evident in contemporary English-as-a-Foreign-Language textbooks. In light of this emerging issue, this study employed critical discourse analysis to examine three sets of textbooks that are widely used in high schools in Taiwan. The study reveals that textbooks produced in Taiwan generally: (1) highlight the indigenous culture of the island, (2) extensively depict contemporary Taiwanese celebrities, specialties, and natural landscapes, (3) embellish the period of Japanese and Dutch-Spanish colonisation, and (4) strategically differentiate between ‘China/Chinese’ and ‘Taiwan/Taiwanese’. The findings expose the Taiwan-centric perspective of the textbooks while downplaying the significance of the national title – ‘the Republic of China’.

The Linguistic Construction of Political Identity: the Case of Catalonia

In the last decades much research has been carried out on discourse as a form of social practice from the Critical Discourse Analysis perspective. The Vienna school of CDA led by Wodak and her associates has developed a discourse-historical approach to discourse which investigates the linguistic construction of national identities through a method of description and analysis which posits three categories –topics, strategies and linguistic devices– employed in the construction, perpetuation, transformation and dismantling of nations and national identities. Following this approach, the present paper aims to analyse the linguistic construction of Catalonia’s present and political future in a corpus of public discourse fragments produced by Catalan pro-independence leaders and activists during the so-called Catalan crisis. The analysis reveals that the linguistic construction of the Catalan present and political future relies on constructive, justification and dismantling strategies that seek to support self-determination and construe Catalonia as an independent Republic.

Nothing but a Humbug: P.T. Barnum, Charles Dickens, and the Construction of National Identities in a Living Archive

Abstract: Even as the Victorians attempted to stabilize British national identity through institutional ownership of cultural property, Britishness remained a protean, imagined construct. This essay shows, through a new narrativization of the auction of Shakespeare's birthplace in 1847, that the purportedly kitschy and fake aspects of Barnumesque, new-money America were paradoxically also constitutive of Britain's own nationalism. In the spring of that year, newspapers advertised that Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon would soon go up for public auction. Rumours immediately began circulating that the American showman P.T. Barnum, who had recently barnstormed through England with the "Greatest Show on Earth," was intent on purchasing the birthplace for his menagerie of cultural oddities. In opposition to this foreign threat, a full-blown rescue campaign, driven by British media fearmongering, was launched in order to save Shakespeare's home "for the nation." Soon, these efforts drew in Britain's own premier showman of the 1840s, Charles Dickens. The nineteenth-century popular press's mythologization of these events, and the myth's subsequent recapitulation in the twenty-first century, is emblematic of the way national-infused archives wind and unwind in a double-spooled temporality. As I renarrativize archival materials associated with the auction of Shakespeare's birthplace, I proffer a different model of American and British nationalisms that points to their symbiotic development and perpetual reinvention. Ultimately, I suggest, we can learn from the Victorians' reinvention of their own history that the nineteenth-century archive is not a stable point of origin but rather a point of departure for questioning our national heritage and understanding the ways in which we inscribe the past with our present.

Rural tourism in China: ‘Root-seeking’ and construction of national identity

This study explores the role of China's rural tourism in building domestic tourists' national identity, with a model illustrating the construction path and causality. In-depth interviews were conducted with domestic tourists, and grounded theory was adopted as the qualitative analysis method. The conceptualised theoretical framework suggests that with embodied experience as the premise, feelings and emotions, cognition and learning, and collective memory are the main attributes influencing national identity. Under the combined influence of these factors, strong emotional bonding, awareness of unity, and cognition of the characteristics of their own ‘community’ are generated, effectively shaping and strengthening national identity. These findings also serve as a practical reference for strengthening national identity and improving the management of rural tourism destinations.

Education in the construction of national identity: a historical and theoretical analysis

The article investigates how education has been crucial in the formation and consolidation of national identity since the Modern Era. Using an exploratory research methodology, the study analyzes historical, theoretical, and empirical sources to understand the relationship between education and state-building. Initially dominated by the Church, education was centralized by the State from the 18th century onwards to promote national identity and social cohesion. In colonial contexts, modern schooling was used to shape the workforce and disseminate colonial values. With the emergence of nation-states, public education became a tool for modernization, development, and globalization. The study concludes that public schooling was fundamental for the construction of state sovereignty and the formation of citizens aligned with state ideals. Curriculum standardization and teacher training ensured social cohesion and the integration of the popular masses into the social structure. Public education emerged as a central institution in the architecture of the modern state, playing a multifaceted role in the formation of citizens and the consolidation of social order. Schooling not only transmitted knowledge but also functioned as a strategic instrument of social control, essential for the stability and progress of modern nations.

Ethnolinguistic Nuclear Roots of Ancient Civilizations in the Light of Later Sound-Developments

Indeed, within current issues and debates in the field of Onomastic or//and Geopolitical-linguistic scholarship, this paper is concerned with politics of language and the semiotic construction of present model ‘ethnonym ↔ religion name (theonyms)’ of modern global linguistics. In this article explore how different linguistic collectivities use cognates and semiotic resources in different geographical spaces to reinforce or contest existing ancient social structures, bearing strong implications for language maintenance and cultural revitalization, construction of ethnolinguistic and national identities, and geographical-linguistic mobility. And looks into how globalization and its accompanying forces and influences, such as the importance of Western languages in socioeconomic mobility, into contact with local Asian cultures and firstly of ancient languages from Proto-Altay family. Because, ethnolinguistic nuclear roots of ancient civilizations in this area now extremely important for investigation native language, culture and conceptions of worldview of the first settlers or nomadic tribes from this mountainous region. Although, Tian Shan (˂ Chong Tong phonetic adaptation form in the Sino-Tibetan) including Pamir and Hindu Kush (˂ Bologunduz ↔Julduz) mountainous chains the cradle human civilization and preserving Proto Altaic form ancient onomastic elements. Wherever, the main ethnolinguistic cognates analyzed in the light of later semantic and sound-developments including with the comparative investigation intercontinental forms.

Images of “the Republican Citizen” Designed in the Context of National Identity Construction in Türkiye during the Early Republican Period

Images of “the Republican Citizen” Designed in the Context of National Identity Construction in Türkiye during the Early Republican Period

Exploring Transnational Identity and Borders in Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines

In contemporary Indian literature, post-independent writers grapple with the complexities of identity and nationhood amidst historical legacies such as partition, migration, displacement, and violence. These issues delve into the primal origins of people and their subsequent diasporic experiences, which challenge their cultural and societal identities. This paper aims to delve into the theme of transcending national identity in Amitav Ghosh’s novel, The Shadow Lines. Through the novel, Ghosh interrogates the construction of borders and national identities, probing the boundaries between people and the geographical landscapes they inhabit. Set against the backdrop of significant historical events like the freedom movement in Bengal, the Second World War, and the partition of India in 1947, the narrative spans three generations across three distinct cities—Calcutta, Dhaka, and London. The characters navigate diverse horizons, shaped by memories of traumatic historical events and nationalist struggles. Their journey from ‘Going Away’ to ‘Coming Home’ is marked by blurred lines between nations and families, symbolized as ‘Shadow Lines,’ transcending temporal and spatial borders in their diasporic experiences. Additionally, the paper delves into the intricacies of individual identity and the inner and outward conflicts arising from geographical dislocation and cultural disparities depicted in the novel.

Lexicalisation of discourse strategies in the national anthems of selected African states

ABSTRACT A national anthem is an official song of a nation. Extant studies have examined national anthems from philosophical, thematic, and historical points of view with insufficient attention paid to the lexicalisation of discourse strategies in the anthems of African states. This study, therefore, investigates how lexical choices and discourse strategies are deployed in the construction of national identities and ideologies. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics and Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach were adopted as framework. Data were purposively selected from ideology-laden anthems, four from each of the five African sub-regions namely: Central (Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea); East (Djibouti, Eritrea, Rwanda, and Uganda); North (Egypt, Libya, Sudan, and Tunisia); Southern (Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe); and West (Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, and Gambia). The study discovers that lexicalisation of discourse strategies of construction, transformation, perpetuation, and representation reflects socio-cultural, political, and cultural experiences of African states.

The Study of National Identities at World Fairs – from Methodological Nationalism to Transnational Approaches and Cultural Isomorphism

The study of national representations at world fairs could provide a strong incentive to the field of nationalism studies, since it enables the construction of national identities to be studied as a global process. This way, it can be shown that the process of national identity construction during the heyday of the world fairs between 1851 and the 1930s demonstrated many converging tendencies. This introductory article is divided into five sections. First, I will show how national and other territorial identities have been shaped at world fairs during the second half of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century. The second section will provide a brief overview of developments in the field of nationalism studies, where scholars have recently placed more emphasis on transnational and bottom-up approaches, while trying to overcome the dichotomy between nation-states and empires. The third section assesses the contributions on nationalism at world fairs published in this and the previous issue of Studies on National Movements, showing how they already integrate many fresh perspectives. In the fourth part, I argue that more attention should be given to the construction of national identities as a global process, showing that world fairs actually had a strong isomorphic effect, as countries increasingly adopted common elements and templates in order to give shape to their national identities. The final section shows that world fairs reflected the existing international order, developed a common taxonomy to categorize human productivity, created a global conceptual framework, defined the main components of a national identity and created successful templates in order to display them for an international audience. World fairs as a consequence had a lasting and homogenizing effect on national identities around the globe.

The Fantastic East: Carnivalesque Public Space and Civil Sphere in Brazilian National Identity Building

Abstract In this article, I bring together the theory of the civil sphere and the concept of carnivalesque public space to analyze the function of symbols and discourses about the non-Western world in the construction of national identity in Brazil. I argue that the carnivalesque public space contributes to broadening and reinforcing solidarity in the civil sphere by de-nationalizing national identity. The orientalist representations that took place in Salvador’s carnival consolidated the “oriental” imaginary as an important dimension of the incipient national identity building process, as well as highlighted the ambivalences and discontinuities of the mosaic of symbolic references associated to it. This fantastic representation of the East corresponded to a particular expectation of meaning: the aesthetic contours of the national-popular boundaries in Brazil and its sense of belonging. The article analyses how national identities are created through symbolic references that are both within and beyond its own borders.

Exploring National Identity (Re)production: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Iran's Representation on its Official Tourism Website

Given the significance of tourism in national identity construction and promotion in current era along with Iran’s need for such an international image promotion, the present study investigated the linguistic texts on the discourse of the Iranian official tourism website to achieve two objectives. Firstly, considering the convoluted interplay among discourse, tourism, and national identity, it investigates how Iranians, in terms of their identity, are represented in the linguistic texts of the discourse used on the Iranian official tourism website. Secondly, it identifies how the discourse either maintains, challenges, or transforms the existing stereotyped perceptions of its identity, embracing its Western represented portrayal in Western media. The current study adopted critical discourse analysis as its framework and used Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as its approach to CDA. The findings of the study demonstrated that Iranians’ authentic and genuine identity, by which they wish to be seen, contests the Western mainstream perceptions of Iranian national identity. Therefore, there is a tendency to transform the prevailing Western stereotypical perceptions of their identity from the producers of the analyzed discourse.

On Re-Constructing the National Identity

The process of constructing a national identity goes through a set of formulas that suggest a particular given definition based on different belongings and perspectives. Deciding on a definition of a nation reveals the extent to which definitions are perceived as suggestive, but not finite endings. The present article debates the national identity construction and discusses the broader sources of approaching national belonging. The article’s objectives target a review of the distinction between the factual and mythical formulation of the concept. It also decodes the basics which a national identity is constructed upon. In light of the postmodern theoretical background, the article examines and reintroduces the conceptualisation of a nation taking into consideration the systematic process over which the nation has ended up being approached similarly. Structurally, the article, first, dissects the primordial pillars of proving a nation’s existence. Consecutively, it scrutinises the foundational dependances in drawing the bottom lines throughout the national construction. The article’s concluding debates on broaching the minorities' re-articulation of the national identity. The paper results in the incredibility of the defining process which imposes certain criteria to confine given notions. It also closes with a suggestion to reframe the national correspondence that leaves room for minor representations to articulate their positions in an attempt to build up a national identity.

The Digital Fabric of Nationalism: How Social Media Weaves Banal Nationalism into Everyday Life

In the digital era, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Weibo have transcended their roles as mere communication tools, emerging as pivotal arenas for the expression and amplification of banal nationalism. This paper explores how these platforms embed subtle nationalistic sentiments within the everyday online interactions of millions, thereby enhancing and reinforcing users sense of national identity. Through qualitative analysis of various social media posts and a comprehensive literature review, this study investigates the mechanisms through which these digital platforms perpetuate nationalistic narratives. Additionally, the paper employs visual data analysis of social media content to demonstrate the prevalence of national symbols and narratives, particularly during significant national events. The findings indicate that social media platforms not only reflect but actively shape societal trends through algorithm-driven content curation that promotes emotionally charged nationalistic posts. This paper underscores the need for a nuanced understanding of how digital environments influence national identity construction and the subtle ways in which they foster a digital form of banal nationalism.

Personification in Chinese Diplomatic Discourse and the Construction of National Identity Based on Corpus: A Case Study of the Regular Press Conference of Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Personification in Chinese Diplomatic Discourse and the Construction of National Identity Based on Corpus: A Case Study of the Regular Press Conference of Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Dinamismo e identificación de participantes en la construcción discursiva de la nación estadounidense

This article analyzes the linguistic choices used in political discourse to represent social actors and their role in the construction of national storylines. We focus on Donald Trump’s and Joseph Biden’s inaugural speeches as a critical exploratory context. The analytical approach involves contrasting their choices for assigning dynamism to socialactors through transitivity roles and for identifying participants through direct, indirect, and pronominal strategies. Our findings show that Trump assigns Actor + Goal roles that construe citizens as agents impinging on material reality, while Biden assigns them Actor – Goal roles that represent citizens as participants in happenings. Trump’s identification of participants shows a higher proportion of indirect strategies linked with possessivequalification, whereas Biden stands out for his frequent use of the singular first person. The findings suggest connections between the strategies identified and the construction of national identities and storylines, both permeated by political leaders’ ideological orientations.

Putin’s retelling of the Great Patriotic War myth and the construction of Russian national identity

Political elites often use the nation’s past to construct the nation’s present identity. In his speeches about the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin frequently uses the Russian national myth of the Great Patriotic War to construct Russia’s present duties, values, and identity. Charges of neo-Nazism and fascism against Ukraine are made to construct the Russian national identity as one that fights proactively against Nazism. However, by using a myth set in the Soviet period, the status of Ukraine as either part of the Russian Self or constituting the foreign Other is highly ambiguous. Although cynical and deeply offensive, Putin’s use of Nazi imagery therefore has a purpose deeper than causing shock and offence.

The rise of Q-pop in Kazakhstan and its impact on national identity

This study delves into the influence of the Korean Wave on the emergence of Q-pop in Kazakhstan, examining its impact on the country's cultural landscape and national identity. Stemming from the worldwide appeal of Korean culture, Q-pop merges local Kazakh motifs with global trends, leaving a significant mark on Kazakhstan's music industry and culture. This study highlights how Q-pop influences Kazakhstani youth's sense of national pride, spreading across Central Asia and countering Russian musical dominance. The research aims to investigate the role of Q-pop in reinforcing Kazakh cultural ties among various demographic groups, thereby enriching our comprehension of national identity in the country. This study utilized a quantitative research methodology, employing an online survey and snowball sampling technique to gather statistically significant results and insights into the rise of Q-pop and its intricate relation with national identity in Kazakhstan. Through exploring Q-pop's interaction with different cultural contexts, this study aims to shed light on the dynamics of cultural adaptation, fusion, and national identity construction in Kazakhstan, paying special attention to the intricate effects of gender and geographical factors. It highlights the critical balance between preserving Kazakh traditions and aligning with the younger generation's preferences.

Resonating Reflections: A Critical Review of Ethnosymbolic Dynamics in Les Six’s Music Nationalism Movement

Les Six and their mentors stirred a debatement of French nationalist music in the early 20th century. However, this movement faced serious criticism and mockery from various quarters and eventually fell apart amid challenges. This critical review explores the ethnosymbolic dynamics within the nationalism music movement of Les Six, and drawing upon ethnomusicological perspectives, the study examines how their compositions reflected and resonated with French national identity and cultural heritage. By analyzing primary sources, scholarly literature, and musical compositions, this article meticulously uncovers the chain reactions generated in the process of constructing national identity and cultural identity within this movement by examining the French societal backdrop, musical traditions, as well as the relationships and attitudes among relevant figures in this movement. The conclusions highlight the multifaceted nature of ethnosymbolism in their work, shedding light on the complexities of national identity construction through music.