Rhetorical Theory and the Critique of National Identity Construction

A striking feature of scholarship on national identity is the relative absence of rhetorical theory, or theory related to the persuasive dimensions of discourse, especially given the fact that rhetorical theorists have been concerned with the manufacturing of public opinion and collective identity for over two millennia. To address this absence, this article discusses how rhetorical theories dealing with narrative theory, the social construction of publics, rhetorical constraints, ideology critique, public memory, political history and post-national identity help both to illuminate and critique emergent patterns of national identification.     

Taiwan and ROC: A critical analysis of President Chen Shui-bien's construction of Taiwan identity in national speeches

Names used to address Taiwan – such as taiwan and zhonghuamingguo (Republic of China [ROC]) – are symbols defining Taiwan's political realities, each with their own unique historical significance. Since his election in 2000, Taiwan's president Chen Shui-bien has had to alternate between taiwan and ROC to strike a balance among conflicting ideas about Taiwan's national identity. The act is grounded in complex political discourse dictating that Taiwan must not be seen as separate from the sinic world and simultaneously to respond to steadily rising Taiwanese consciousness. Facing intercessions by the United States and China, as well as ever-present domestic clashes, rhetorical exigency requires the president to fashion unique political discourse concerning what Taiwan is and ought to be. This study explores how these names and related expressions are used in Chen's public addresses to the nation during his two-term tenure from 2000 to 2008, and how their development reflects the struggle over Taiwan's national identity.     

Television and the making of a transnational Alevi identity

ABSTRACT

Satellite broadcasting technologies contribute a great deal to interaction across national boundaries, and in this regard satellite television is significant in the construction of a transnational public sphere for the Alevi community in Turkey and abroad. This paper addresses the role of television in the making of that transnational Alevi identity. In particular, it focuses on the flow and the programme contents of Cem TV and Yol TV, two leading Alevi channels, to demonstrate how the transnational imagination of Alevi identity corresponds to different political understandings of Aleviness.     

'The Justice of Queen Victoria': Boer Oppression,and the Emergence of a National Identity in Lesotho

The growth of a national identity in Lesotho after 1910 was a direct response to the threat of incorporation into the Union of South Africa. The Basotho feared being governed by what they considered to be an unjust and hostile South Africa. The Basotho appealed to the justice of the British government - for them to continue to honour the protection that they had extended to the nineteenth-century Basotho chief, Moshoeshoe. The protection which Moshoeshoe had secured entrenched his position as the centrepiece of the Basotho's emergent national identity in the twentieth century.     

Japan.com

Contemporary Japan is in the midst of an identity crisis grounded in conditions of economic, political and social confusion and a lost sense of national direction and purpose. This paper explores the bases of Japan's evolving national political identity. It notes the construction of a sense of Japanese homogeneity and the role of official discourses in the formation of Japan's national identity. The paper argues that internationalisation, cybernetic contacts and community insecurities are undermining the received idea of what it means to be Japanese and posing fundamental challenges to the legitimacy of the contemporary Japanese state.     

The National Identity of the 'Natives' of Poland's 'Recovered Lands'

Among the inhabitants of the formerly German territory that came under Polish administration following the Second World War, the Polish authorities and public expected to find both Poles and Germans: the former would be allowed to remain and the latter would be expelled. But the question of the national identity of the inhabitants of this territory proved more complicated than expected. Polish attitudes and policies toward those inhabitants initially considered Polish often had effects opposite of those intended. As a result, a substantial portion, perhaps even a majority, of those who had originally been seen as Polish either were expelled along with the Germans or claimed to be German and on that basis sought to emigrate to Germany.     

Performing new identities: the community language of post-crisis Italian migrants in London

ABSTRACT

After the 2008 global crisis, Italy has experienced a relevant resumption of emigration. Tens of thousands of young Italians have chosen London as their favourite destination, giving rise to a new Italian community in the city. This article focuses on the transformation of migrants’ national identity and on a distinctive device of identity expression: language. Sample cases, extracted from a dataset collected for an original doctoral project, are used to explain how the insertion of English elements in speakers’ native language become the expression of the loss of pure national identity and of the renegotiation of transnational and migratory identities.     

Physicians,Humour and Therapeutic Laughter in the Ancient World

This paper examines the ways 'mixed race' women in Canada contemplate their relationship to national identity. Through qualitative, open-ended interviews, the research demonstrates how some women of 'mixed race' contest ideas of the nation as constituted through the policy of multiculturalism in Canada. To challenge the tropes of the national narrative, some women of 'mixed race' develop nuanced models of cultural citizenship, illustrating that national identities are formed and transformed in relation to representation. Refusing to be positioned outside the nation, they effectively produce their own meanings of identity by working through their own personally identified 'mixed race' bodies to the national body politic, where some of them see their own bodies as intrinsically 'multicultural'. The paper ends by addressing the paradoxes of multiculturalism, emphasising through narratives that the policy produces hierarchical spaces against which some 'mixed race' women imaginatively negotiate, contest and challenge perceptions of their racialised and gendered selves.     

National Identity between Tradition and Reflexive Modernisation: The Contradictions of Central Asia

Central Asia, one of the most understudied areas in the world, is currently going through the upheavals of modernisation and nation formation. Arguing against the one-dimensional modernist conclusion that this process was arrested during the Soviet period, the article sets out to explore the complex weave of historical continuity and discontinuity in the formation of national identity in the new states. It argues against the notion that national identity involves the necessary dissolution of traditional ties. Moreover, the article substantially qualifies the contemporary theoretical trend to treat continuing elements of tradition as merely dead images of the past, given life by instrumental elites. Instead of nationality being posited as a one-dimensional form of identity, the article sets up an approach that emphasises the contradictory layering of identity.     

Armenian crafts in the Ottoman Empire: Armenian identity and cultural exchange

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes how the dominant narrative of Armenian national identity shapes perceptions of Armenian culture and offers examples of Ottoman Armenian craft art to bring to light an under acknowledged, yet intrinsically valuable, dynamic within Armenian cultural identity. Within studies of art history, cultural exchange between Ottoman Armenians and Turks has been ignored due to its inconvenience to the conflictual understanding of Armenian-Ottoman relations central to Armenian national identity. These artifacts speak out against reductive norms and offer an important addendum to the understanding of what it meant and continues to mean to be Armenian.     

Citizens of Nowhere in Particular: Cosmopolitanism,Writing, and Political Engagement in Eighteenth-Century Europe

This article explores the connection in the late eighteenth century between the invention of citizenship and the obfuscation of local, corporate or national identity under the guise of cosmopolitanism. The common premise in much recent writing on nationalism is that the nation, even if it is an 'imagined' community, provided the critical framework in which political identity and, hence, political participation first became possible for ordinary people. However, it is clear that in absolutist Europe, private subjects were often best able to make themselves into political actors on either the national or the continental stage by de-situating themselves rhetorically, that is, claiming to speak from no place, no position, and no name except 'friend of humanity' or 'citizen of the world'. Moreover, this literary strategy of insisting on one's fungible individuality—the notion that one was no more than a generic 'simple citizen' and no less than 'the plenipotentate of my own ideas' in a culture obsessed with social position and family name—ultimately helped to bolster an alternative (and often historically overlooked) way of thinking about relations among states and the individuals within them that marked an early challenge to the hegemony of national interest.     

Political constructions of a cross-community identity in a divided society: how politicians articulate Northern Irishness

ABSTRACT

A shared identity has been shown to reduce prejudice between conflicting social groups. One such common national category is the ‘Northern Irish’ identity which can be inclusive of both Catholics and Protestants. This study analyses the plenary sessions of the Northern Ireland Assembly to show how the national category ‘Northern Irish’ is framed by politicians. Content analysis shows that it is used more often by centrist parties who tend to frame it positively and as part of their political viewpoint. There is also evidence of the instrumental use of this identity by unionists in line with the ingroup projection model.     

Between Neo-liberalism and Neo-indigenismo: Reconstructing National Identity in Mexico

Heightened integration with the US coupled with the rise of an indigenous movement have challenged and strained long-held images regarding the US and the indigenous within Mexico. As a result, Mexico finds itself facing the difficult task of re-evaluating and reconstructing its national identity. This paper explores the traditional images of the US and the Indian shaping national identity in Mexico and the challenges posed today by neo-liberalism and neo-indigenismo. It sets out a range of current issues, explores the linkages and contradictions, and examines the state of national reform. Fundamentally, the paper strives to raise important theoretical questions and hence set the stage for further research into these issues.     

To see ourselves as others see us: identity and attitudes towards immigration amongst civic nationalists

ABSTRACT

This article examines how different conceptions of national identity can be linked to attitudes towards cultural pluralism. The tensions between more culturally pluralistic societies and sustained support for nationalism represent an important political issue in modern western European politics. Such tensions are of particular relevance for stateless nationalist and regionalist parties (SNRPs) for whom national/regional identity is a major political driver. This article empirically tests the relationship between different conceptions of national identity and attitudes towards cultural pluralism in two SNRPs—the Scottish National Party and the Frisian National Party. The article draws upon evidence from two unique full party membership studies and is supported with evidence from documentary analysis. A key finding is that the manner in which members conceptualise national identity has significant implications for their attitudes towards cultural pluralism, which has the potential of becoming a source of tension within SNRPs. A key implication of the article is that there is evidence that attitudes of general members and officially stated party positions and narratives diverge on issues relating to cultural pluralism and national identity. These tensions could potentially be harmful for the party's overall civic image.     

Fuzzy frontiers of identity: The British case

Abstract

The author examines the formation of British identity, looking at the interaction of ‘the British’ with the Celtic fringe, the Dominions, the Commonwealth, Anglophone America, Europe and peoples described in immigration law as ‘aliens’. He argues that the core identity is constructed in the course of interactions (sometimes hostile) with these externalized identities. The frontiers between identities are often ‘fuzzy’, allowing a degree of penetration by outsiders. The concept of ‘fuzziness’ is elaborated. The shape and edges of British identity are shown to be historically changing, often vague and to a degree, malleable. It is suggested that the move away from the Dominions and Commonwealth to Europe has contributed to a crisis of national identity.     

Jewish Identity,Denomination and Denominational Mobility

This paper explores religious and ethnic components of American Jewish identity, in both public and private dimensions. In the first part of the paper, we study how nine aspects of Jewish identity vary among the three main American Jewish denominations;we then explain how much of this variation is related to the background factors of Jewish education and denomination. Finally, we consider the effect of the extensive mobility that is found between denomination raised and current denomination, and discuss its implications for the individual who moves between denominations as well as for the denominations as a whole. We show that movers from more traditional to less traditional denominations retain an influence of their previous denomination; while movers from less traditional to more traditional denominations exhibit a 'rededication' effect which gives them a stronger Jewish identity than those raised and staying in the denomination. As a result, the current patterns of interdenominational mobility result in a strengthening of Jewish identity in each denomination, and therefore among American Jews as a whole. Further, differences between the denominations are mitigated by this mobility. However, the effect may be short-lived, because according to current mobility trends, the numbers of those with stronger Jewish identity are dwindling. The analysis is based on data from the New York Jewish Population Study conducted in 1991.     

Forging Ukrainian national identity through remembrance of World War II

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how the collective remembrance of a specific historical event shapes the national identity that underpins a state’s foreign policy objectives. By drawing on multidisciplinary insights, the paper explains how political actors frame past events in order to promote a certain conceptualization of a national community. Taking Ukraine as a case study, the paper demonstrates how Russia’s intervention in Ukraine in 2014–2015 prompted Ukrainian policy-makers to re-define Ukraine’s relations with the EU and Russia by re-evaluating the experience of Ukrainians in WWII.     

Segments of Self and Other: The Magyar Hungarian Case

Using a case study from the border region of southeast Hungary, this paper makes the argument that national identity is experienced as a segmented structure of Selves and Others of varying social distances, rather than a binary Self and Other. It also posits that only some of these Others, those perceived to be the most familiar and threatening, are useful for members of a nation to use in thinking about themselves, either in alliance or opposition. In this Hungarian case, the most useful Others for defining Hungarian identity in alliance and opposition are, respectively, the Western and Balkan Other .     

From Waverley to Outlander: reinforcing Scottish diasporic identity through book consumption

ABSTRACT

Books are arguably fundamental to national identity and scholars across various theoretical perspectives perceive books as being integral to the creation, perpetuation, and myths and symbols of nations. This article uses interview data with leaders of Scottish heritage organizations to investigate the role of books in Scottish diasporic identity. This article concludes that books can be a binding force in diaspora communities, and lived diasporic Scots and ancestral Scots consume different types of Scottish books that reflect personalization of myths and symbols presented in these books.