National Hymn as Patriotic Discourse Genre

Abstract

The author forms up an evolutionary semiotic succession of the hymn and concludes that the national hymn is a hybrid literary genre which is embodied in various discourse species and that it possesses identifying, unifying, axiological, “optimistic”, ideological, laudatory, expressive, magical and performative functions. The article analyzes national hymns of ex-republics of the Soviet Union and proves that despite being simultaneously acknowledged as official state symbols these hymns differ in their genre origin, themes and semantic features. It is also established that the hymn texts contain information about the history, geography and political structure of the country. Axiological aspects of the national hymn are formed by semantic features of love and caritative feelings accompanying it. Imperative aspects are formed by semantic features relative to glorification of homeland, to wishing it prosperity and well-being, to faithfulness, and to the defense of its freedom. The positive self-stereotypes of the people inhabiting the country are regularly reproduced in the hymn texts which are saturated with metaphors, the main of which is comparing the native country to a mother. The specific nature of hymns of different countries is formed by the combination of their concrete semantic features.

Keywords

• hymn
• national hymn
• discourse
• genre
• speech function
• semantic feature
• semiotic succession
• semantic aspects