A Critical Pragmatic Study of National Identity Representation in American Political Discourse

Abstract

National identity is considered the main reason for displaying the national flag ,celebrating national holidays and even declaring solidarity with millions of people whom we do not meet. The study investigates how national identity can be defined along both ethno-cultural and civic lines. This study is a critical pragmatic study of national identity used in American political discourse. One political speech is selected to be the data.This speech belongs to Trump. The model adopted in the analysis is based on Grice’s Maxims Breaching (1975)  and Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory (1987). A mixed method is used in analyzing and representing the results. This work tries to answer the following questions: What are the types of national identity that are represented in American political discourse? What is the most common type of maxims breaching and politeness strategies? Which one of these strategies that is highly used? This study aims at identifying the most frequent type of national identity, investigating the most frequent type of maxims breaching and politeness strategies in addition to identifying one of these strategies that is highly used. To answer the above questions, the study hypothesizes that: politicians present their ethnic national identity higher than the civic version, flouting quality maxim is extremely employed, positive politeness strategies score high frequency, and finally politeness strategies are the most dominant strategies used in the adopted model. The most important conclusions the study has come up with are:1) ethnic national identity is highly demonstrated within American political discourse more than the civic one. 2) Regarding maxims breaching, flouting quality maxim is the most commonly one used in the political speech under study. 3) Politicians make use of politeness strategies. Positive politeness strategies are the most dominant ones 4) According to the pragmatic strategies, it is shown that politeness strategies are highly utilized in presenting national identity.