The rise of national identities in Europe. The representation of Catalonian independence movement in English-Speaking press from a CDA perspective

Abstract

Over the last years Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has been gaining ground in the academic sphere, spreading beyond linguistics across wide raging disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, sociology or political studies, to name but a few. The aim of this BA thesis is to examine how the press in the UK and/or America reports on the events related to Catalan nationalism and independence movement that have happened lately in Spain. For that purpose, a CDA perspective is endorsed in order to determine whether such social media are politically biased, highlighting the differences in the new coverage and stressing the ways in which different reporting strategies may revive political debate. First, the concepts of nationalism and national identity are described, noting how these feelings are interwoven with political discourse as a consequence of the nationalistic movements that spread through Europe during the nineteenth century. As a case in point we examine the so-called ‘Catalonian independence movement’, a controversial social movement historically derived from Catalan nationalism. The CDA framework for the investigation is provided by reference works on the issue of politics and national identities such as Fairclough (1989), Van Dijk (2009) and Wodak (2009), to name but a few. In the empirical part, the CDA analysis of a selection of news serves as a basis to determine whether different political stances on the issue of Catalan independence (and nationalism) are instantiated. The study is brought to an end with a summary of conclusions and suggestions for further research