ABSTRACT
Since the late 20th century, much research in Discourse Studies (DS) and Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) has analysed the many dimensions of national and transnational ‘identity politics’ and started to investigate how the discursive construction of such identities draws on collective and individual memories, on hegemonic and common-sense narratives, and on myths which are proposed as constitutive for national identification. Indeed, one might claim that the entire field of ‘language and politics’ in postwar Europe since the 1960s and 1970s was triggered by the urge to grasp the influence of persuasive rhetoric in and on totalitarian regimes and related major catastrophes in the 20th century, thus trying to come to terms with the traumatic pasts in Europe and beyond (Postoutenko, 2010; Wodak and Auer-Boreo, 2009).
