National identity and its verbal reflection in the English media discourse

Abstract

The article analyzes the reflection of national identity in modern English-language media discourse. Nowadays the problem of national identity is one of foreground issues in the field of humanistic knowledge, however, it has usually escaped the attention of linguists. Meanwhile, it was pointed out many times in linguistic literature that there is an increasing trend towards all national in the context of globalization in the world today. Consideration of national identity based on the linguistic approach undertaken in this article contributes to both the introduction of national identity issues in the field of linguistic analysis and the establishment of its specificity in the English-language media discourse. News media texts fragments of The Independent and The Guardian dated 2019 were analyzed in this article. It demonstrates the novelty and relevance of the research. In order to clarify linguistic framework for the analysis the linguistic concept of identification was clarified as a correlation of an individual with a social group or ethnic and social community. The approach to genres differentiation of media discourse was developed under this article. It was especially emphasized that identified linguistic methods for actualization of national identity relate only to the genre of news reports which are characterized as non-subjective. Nevertheless, the author finds ways of expressing his/her complicity in British nation by means of modality and through the selection of quotes that correspond to his/her understanding of events. As a result, it all turns out to be a means of authors national self-identification in terms of its solidarity with the authors of quotations as representatives of the British nation. This study was carried out with the use of the contextual method, the descriptive method and the method of communicative analysis which made it possible to identify a variety of means representing the national identity of the author.

Keywords

• national identity, self-identification, discourse, media discourse, news media text, modality, evaluation.