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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 22:6 (2023) ► pp.779–801

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National identity revisited

Deictic WE in President Zelenskyy’s speeches on Russia-Ukraine war

ORCiD logo with link | Ilia State University
Published online: 26 May 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22106.gul
Abstract
National Identity is a discursively constructed complex entity which can reshape an image of a nation. Even one person powerful enough to be a representative of the whole nation can promote a collective sense of nationality/patriotism and sovereignty of the country in line with social, historical, or most importantly, a versatile geopolitical context. The present study is an illustration of how lexical choices of a particular political figure – the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – identified by specific corpus linguistic research tools in the discourse, defines and emphasizes a national integrity during the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis is applied to investigate how a prominent Ukrainian political figure – Volodymyr Zelenskyy discursively constructs national identity in the context of the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war. The research is based on the linguistic scrutiny of presidential video addresses, which are stored at the official presidential website and transcribed in English.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Discursive construction of national identity
    • 2.1National identity in the context of Europeanness
    • 2.2National identity and person deixis
  • 3.Methods
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1The case of inclusive We – We of European togetherness
    • 4.2Addressee exclusive We- reproaching We
    • 4.3Metonymic We: Patriotic We
    • 4.4Polarity of deictic pronouns: We vs. They
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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