Discourses of Borders and the Nation in the USA: A Discourse-Historical Analysis

This book introduces an innovative critical analysis of borders in contemporary political discourse, using examples from the Trump presidency and early stages of the Biden presidency to explore how borders are used as mechanisms of power to invoke different notions of national identity. //

The volume considers border as discursive construct, reflecting on their importance in the construction and expression of national identity across different forms of modern political discourse. Employing a framework informed by Ruth Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach, Demata examines how analyzing discourse from the Trump and Biden presidencies can reveal unique insights into how politicaians and other stakeholders use borders to recontextualize historical discourses of national identity and employ discursive strategies of inclusion and exclusion in promoting the idea of ＂the nation.＂ In adopting an approach which situates these discourses within their historical and socio-cultural contexts, the volume helps to further bridge the gap between different disciplines toward offering a multi-faceted understanding of notions of borders and national identity in contemporary political language. //

This book will be of interest to students and scholars in discourse analysis, language and power, language and politics, political science, and border studies.

Massimiliano Demata is Associate Professor of English at the University of Turin. He was a Fulbright scholar in Yale (1999) and Indiana University (2014) and has held Visiting Professorships at Saarland University (2020), Sciences Po Lyon (2021), and OTH Regensburg (2022). He is the co-editor of the Journal of Language and Discrimination and has published on populist discourse, Trump’s rhetoric, metaphors of the nation and social media discourse.