Paper short abstract:

The given paper studies how the concept of national identity is formulated in the fundamental laws of the countries studied (Canada and Estonia): Constitution and civil rights documents and in the subjective attitudes of the students at the state universities.

Paper long abstract:

The given paper studies how the concept of national identity is formulated in the fundamental laws of the countries studied (Canada and Estonia): Constitution and civil rights documents and in the subjective attitudes of the students at the state universities. The work compares the discursive definitions of national identity to find out to what extent different countries rely on ethnic and/or political definitions of national identity. Secondly, the research introduces the 'subjective' aspects of the discursive definition of nationality and on the basis of the qualitative interviews determines informants' attitudes and interpretations. The current study will gradually examine whether there is a disparity between the formulations of national identity as laid down by the institutions in the fundamental documents of the countries and the individual attitudes of the people living in these countries.

Documents and subjective attitudes are analysed on the basis of the context sensitive Discourse Historical Approach developed by Martin Reisigl and Ruth Wodak et al. (2001, 2009) incorporating knowledge about the history of the discursive event as well as social and political fields where it takes place. Two different corpuses are studied, among others, in terms of referential strategies including: collectivisation, spatialisation, originalisation, culturalisation, politicisation. These strategies are employed to create collective images of different identities and the ideas about the existing order within a particular country. In other words, they create and supply information about how the people are defined and what the general sociopolitical atmosphere in a particular country is.