Nationalism, party political discourse and Scottish independence: comparing discursive visions of Scotland's constitutional status

This article critically examines the predominant narratives which emanated from party political discourse in relation to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Utilising a methodological approach centring on political discourse analysis (Fairclough and Fairclough 2012), this paper analyses party...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nations and nationalism 2019-10, Vol.25 (4), p.1212-1237
Main Author: Whigham, Stuart
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Constitutions
Discourse analysis
ethnosymbolism
Independence
Labor parties
Legislatures
Methodological approaches
Modernism
Narratives
Nationalism
Nationalist movements
Political discourse
Political manifesto
Political parties
Politics
Prime ministers
Referendums
Scottish independence
Scottish nationalism
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Summary:This article critically examines the predominant narratives which emanated from party political discourse in relation to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Utilising a methodological approach centring on political discourse analysis (Fairclough and Fairclough 2012), this paper analyses party manifestos and constitutional policy documents produced by the three largest political parties represented in the Scottish Parliament, namely, the pro‐independence Scottish National Party, and two pro‐union parties, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. The emergent discourse of each party is interrogated by drawing upon pertinent theoretical concepts from previous academic analyses of Scottish nationalism, with particular attention given to those which have deployed modernist and ethnosymbolist theoretical approaches when analysing the Scottish context. This facilitates a critical reflection on the contrasting and nuanced narratives of the Scottish nation's past and future espoused by each political party vis‐à‐vis modernist and ethnosymbolist theory, illustrating the ways in which contrasting theorisations of nationalism are empirically tangible within political discourse and are thus not simply theoretical ions.
ISSN:1354-5078
1469-8129
DOI:10.1111/nana.12535