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

Abstract

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.