In:News with an Attitude: Ideological perspectives in the historical press
Edited by Claudia Claridge
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 105] 2025
► pp. 12–32
Chapter 2British ideologies in the (re)-shaping of the American identity
A corpus-based analysis of the possessive our in American newspapers (1764–1783)
Published online: 16 January 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.105.02cec
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.105.02cec
Abstract
This paper focuses on the use of possessive our in colonial newspapers related to
the Imperial Crisis in North America (1764–1783) and analyses its exceptional frequency and distributional patterns
through a corpus-based methodology. It investigates the dominant ideologies which (re-)shape the colonists’ national
identity by focusing on their linguistic actualizations through a preference for the grammatical relationship of
possession. The interconnection between ideologies and possessive usage reveals to what extent the British ideology of
property as precondition of liberty and economic prosperity was at the basis of the British Americans’ identity before
and after the Declaration of Independence. Despite the discourse polarization of our vs
their, North American colonists had still a long way to go before acquiring full consciousness of
their own national distinctiveness from their British fellow-countrymen.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Theoretical framework
- 3.Corpus and methodology
- 4.Analysis
- 4.1Period 1: Where we are and what we are entitled to own
- 4.2Period 2: What is licit and what is illicit
- 4.3Period 3: What is our relationship with others, what we own and who belongs to us
- 5.Conclusion
Notes References
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