Nations, nationalismes : l'approche discursive

Abstract

ACHARD Pierre - Nations and Nationalisms approached by discourse analysis. The "Nation" concept in modern-day political discourse, which presupposes that « every human being participates by right in the power process », has become part and parcel of a « worldwide, translinguistic » inter-discourse, assuming that ethnic and demie criteria are regulated locally. Pierre Achard finds support for this view in his own formal model of Discourse Semantics, rapidly presented here, and applied to the notion as it appeared in 18th-century France. He then goes on to show how the same model can account for the derivation of the romantic interpretations, which favor an extensional definition of "Nation" (ethnos rather than demos).