Discourse and Social Praxis in the Construction of Nation and State

Abstract

This article aims to delineate a theoretical framework that can be implemented in a larger research programme to investigate nationalisms and citizenship concepts on the basis of discourse formations in various languages. The theoretical framework, deriving from Benveniste's model of the énonication, proposes a typology of situated meanings of the pronoun we and its analogues in languages other than English. This model is then applied in two pilot studies, one from a French source, the other primarily dealing with a Russian text. Analysis of the French text shows that distribution of pronominal usage and categorization are able to discriminate similarities and differences between two speakers' conceptions of nation and citizenship. Analysis of the Russian and English versions of a text arising in 1989 in the Baltic states reveals different localized discourse concerning the notions of people and nation. These two studies enable conclusions to be drawn regarding the relationship of the idea of nation and citizen to be related to different languages, cultures and discourse formations, and the scope of future research to be drawn.