Regional Identity in Elite Discourse

The topic of the research is to analyze the discourse that different local academic, cultural and political elites use in order to construct a regional identity in Banat province from Romania, and to reveal the used discursive structures and peculiarities, which appear in this context. The research can be included in the broader fields of regional studies and critical discourse analysis. The main question is why reference to regional identity appears in a specific form in the discourse of different regional academic, cultural and political elites. My main hypothesis is that the different social actors choose the discursive strategies in function of the goals they pursue, the context in which they appear and the target groups to whom they speak to. Similar discursive strategies can be used in different contexts, generating different meanings and outcomes. The actors make references to the past in order to achieve the goals which they pursue or to accomplish the requirements of the role they fill in. Moreover, I argue that there is no single homogenous discursive structure that includes all the three academic, cultural and political levels, while these are heterogeneous as well.