marco scalvini*

Legitimating inaction: Differing identity constructions of the Scots language

The Scots language plays a key role in the political and cultural landscape of contemporary Scotland. From a discourse-historical perspective, this article explores how language ideologies about the Scots language are realized linguistically in a so-called ‘languages strategy’ drafted by the Scottish Executive, and in focus groups consisting of Scottish people. This article shows that although the decline of Scots is said to be a ‘tragedy’, focus group participants seem to reject the notion of Scots as a viable, contemporary language that can be used across a wide range of registers. The policy document also seems to construct Scots in very positive terms, but is shown to be unhelpful or potentially even damaging in the process of changing public attitudes to Scots.

‘Perhaps this is not fiction’: The discursive construction of national and regional identities in Belgium’s public television broadcast hoax on Flemish independence

This article sets out to reveal and evaluate the strength and scope of those units of media discourse that are connoted by identity. More specifically, it seeks to demonstrate which discursive strategies the media adopt in the case of a hoax news broadcast that announced ‘the end of Belgium as we know it’ in order to construct and stage the opposition between Walloon region-building (‘Us’) and Flemish nation building (‘Them’). For this purpose, it will focus on lexico-grammatical choices, co-textual deployment of rhetorical devices and socio-referential correlations. Relating these observations to social theory on national identity (specifically, Anderson’s historical materialist approach and Smith’s work on ethnosymbolism), as well as relevant sociopolitical perspectives, will allow for a demonstration of the ways in which discursive strategies exploit the symbiosis between language as a functional means of communication and as the carrier of a shared set of values to construct national and regional identities.

Regional identity as celebration and routine: ‘Mitteldeutschland’s’ glorification and its taken-for-granted meaning in media content

Contemporary approaches to regional identity generally consider regions to be social or cultural constructions rather than natural entities. Therefore ‘Mitteldeutschland’ (Middle-Germany or Central Germany) can be understood as a product of symbolic regionalization in terms of its media status. The regional broadcasting station Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) presents its history as the history of a German heartland with great cultural and national benefits. For example, Luther and Bach are placed in a natural and historic landscape that is regarded as the origin of major historic developments. This article emphasizes aspects of linguistic reference and coherence and inference embedded in a web of (successful) reasoning, which shows how the term ‘Mitteldeutschland’ fades from being the main subject of discourse to its unreflected background. The relations between explicit naming and defining, on the one hand, and implicit and tacit knowledge, on the other, is presented by the use of argumentation analysis.

The glocalization of politics in television: Fiction or reality?

This article investigates the ‘glocalization’ of the US TV popular drama series The West Wing, while focusing on one (in some ways) exceptional episode. Because politics is inherently linked to language, discourse and communication, I will take an approach from the perspective of critical discourse analysis (the discourse-historical approach), with a particular focus on elements of argumentation theory and rhetoric, and combine this with media studies. More specifically, I attempt to illustrate how a thorough understanding of the topoi operating within the complex dialogues and interactions helps to reveal the series’ (manifest and latent) political and didactic objectives, embedded in a longstanding tradition of conveying US American liberal values via films and TV.The episode analyzed in this article, Isaac and Ishmael (which was broadcast immediately after 9/11) is exceptional because it explicitly relates to salient real life events; its topical focus on the ‘war on terror’ shifts attention from US domestic politics to an issue that, according to US policy rhetoric, concerns the whole world. Thus, this episode links the debates taking place in one of the world’s most famous institutions, The White House, with those occurring in workplaces across the world: a truly ‘g/local’ moment. The interdisciplinary analysis allows insight into the intricate and complex discursive construction of new glocal narratives, particularly in times of political crisis, revealing which norms are projected and recontextualized both locally and globally, given the many translations of the series worldwide.

‘Writing’ and ‘region’ in the 21st century: Epistemological reflections on regionally-located art and literature in the wake of the digital revolution

This article, which draws upon the work of the AHRC-funded research project Moving Manchester (2006—9), looks at the ways in which Manchester’s vibrantly multicultural writing community positions itself in relation to issues of region and regional identity. In particular, it investigates how contemporary writers have both reproduced and challenged the stereotypes associated with the city, issues of filiation/affiliation and the way in which many local writers’ groups may be said to have produced literature which is of the region without necessarily being about it. The innovative ‘grassroots’ nature of much Manchester writing (notably its ‘live literature’ scene) is also considered. The final section of the article compares this community-based experience of ‘writing’ and ‘region’ with that found on digital storytelling websites and posits that the digital form would seem to encourage transnational rather than regional identifications in the texts produced.

Storying community: Re-imagining regional identities through public cultural activity

This article is designed to stimulate discussion around a number of related topics. Sceptical that governments, regional or otherwise, are capable of producing regional identities in any other but rhetorical or formulaic terms, it is argued that, in the past decade or so, a number of potentially popular and democratizing tendencies have developed in the wake of new media technologies, but also in different forms of public, community-based cultural activity. Drawing upon models of such activity like the 1993 Chicago Culture in Action project and other examples of a new genre of public art in Manchester and London, together with television-based initiatives, it will be shown how active communities, however tentative and provisional, can be brought into being through interests held in common. On the other hand, new social media are explored for their potential for producing ‘network communities’ in online and offline modes. One prominent and widespread example is digital storytelling, which, at local, regional, national and international levels, has recognized the power of the complex and multiple narratives that shape people’s lives and has harnessed these in ways that bring together narrative, technology and community-building as part of a development strategy, particularly for those alienated or otherwise excluded from access to media. Linked to the focus on digital storytelling will be a brief consideration of citizen media sites and initiatives as a means of possibly helping to open up, legitimate and construct regional identity in a multilayered fashion.

(Re)constructing the region in the 21st century