Construction of favorable national identity through political discourse

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to uncover how the use of language by the Romanian former king, Michael I, in his political speeches helps to construct a favourable national identity on the basis of a collection of discourses. The implications for the concept of national identity were discovered using a thematic analysis on five New Year’s Eve messages of the Romanian former king, broadcasted from 1960 to 1989, via the radio channels Free Europe and The Voice of America, the Romanian editions. The choice of the political figure was motivated by the fact that the former king impersonates the Agent who "displays attitudes, feelings, beliefs, and wishes” (Duranti 2004, 452). The study adopts an approach which derives from the “Constructive Strategies” of Wodak et al. (1999) and a number of sub-strategies, further enhanced by employing the techniques from Corpus Linguistics. I decided to focus on the one concerning the linguistic construction of a common political present and future. It is centred on citizenship, political achievements, current problems, dangers and future aspirations. The linguistic features under study comprise the use of relational values of words, rhetoric devices, and cultural aspects. The results show that the role of the concept of national identity, as it was depicted in king Michael I speeches, was to facilitate the diffusion of the nationalistic messages and to motivate people coming together towards a common goal, namely fighting against the communist oppression.