National and state identities in the political discourse of a substate nation: the Scottish case

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National and state identities in the political
discourse of a sub-state nation the Scottish case
Daniel Soule, Glasgow Caledonian University
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Beyond Big State Banal Nationalism
Rival politicians and opposing factions present
their different visions of the nation to their
electorates. In order for the political argument
to take place with the nation, there must be
elements which are beyond argument. Different
factions may argue about how we should think of
ourselves and what is to be our national
destiny. In so doing they will take for granted
the reality of us, the national place.
(Billig, 1995 95-96)
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All Scotlands political parties are nationalists
In an important sense, Scotlands politicians
are all Nationalists now The emergence of
national(ist) frame of reference raises the
question of how politics and culture engage.
Oddly and unusually, there is no simple
correspondence between cultural and political
nationalism. (McCrone, 2001 p.126)

• National identity in a sub-state nation
• How is a national identity constructed when
  Nation and State
• are not synonymously conceived?
• How are national and state identities mediated
  in the discourse of
• politicians?

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Party political descriptions of the nation and
national identity Civic public institutions
legal, educational, religious, democratic Non-civ
ic place, history, traditions custom,
ethnicity, linguistic Inclusive unbounded and
open Exclusive bounded and selective
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Expressions of Civic Nationalism
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Expressions of Non-civic Nationalism
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Summary Scottish nationalism in Political
Discourse

• Unionist and Separatist parties in devolved
  Scottish politics demonstrate similar conceptions
  of what Scotland is.
• Civic and non-civic realisations of Scottish
  nationalism co-occur.
• Civic e.g. legal, educational and civic
  institutions
• Non-civic e.g. language, culture, tradition and
  landscape
• Inclusive representations of Scottishness are
  shown to co-exist with other more bounded
  imaginings of Scotland as a culturally,
  historically and linguistically distinct place.

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Locating Nation and State
Separatist/Unionist ideological dichotomy
pervades in Scotland as opposed to the Left/Right
or Authoritarian/Liberal divide of
Westminster. Linguistic analysis uses deixis
and other textual indicators of location to
investigate the relationship between Nation and
State in Scottish political discourse. All
parties, including Unionists, maintain a national
Scottish and UK/British State
distinction. Unionists portray the relationship
as closer and more positive in relation
to the national deictic centre, while
Separatists, emphasise negative relations and
increased distance from the national
we.
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Constructing Proximal In-groups and Distal
Out-groups

• Unionists mitigate the distinction and positively
  frame UK level issues when
• advantageous, modulating between National and
  State levels as necessary.
• Syntactic and semantic terms of equivalence e.g.
  partnership, between
• Superordinate categorise e.g. the UK economy.
• Out-groups remain party political, with no
  locational aspect.
• Separatists (e.g. SNP and SSP) draw antithetical
  comparisons with non-Scottish out-groups,
• locating them as distal from the Scottish deictic
  centre. This anchors and aligns party
• political and national interests in the Scottish
  National centre.
• Locational labels e.g. English/UK/London labels
• Deictic makers e.g. ours vs. theirs, us vs.
  them
• here vs. there
• Modal deixis - metaphorical moral
  distance, equating
• to spatial distance

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Conclusions
Parties construct similar representations of the
Scottish nation including a mix of civic
non-civic and inclusive exclusive conceptions.
And all parties maintain a distinction between a
Scottish national and British/UK State identity.
Unionist/Separatist divide means that parties
compete on the basis of what is in the best
interest of the Nation within or outwith the UK
State.
Unionist parties, while still constructing a
positive national in-group, portray the UK or
British state identity in positive terms, often
equivalent in status, mitigating and perceived
spatial or moral distance.
Separatists, however, construct a negative
distinction between national and state levels.
Syntactically and semantically constructing the
UK/British state level as spatially and morally
distal from the national Scottish centre.