Textual Analysis of KTV

Abstract

This chapter focuses on discursive constructions of Kurdish identities on KTV. Particular attention is paid to the construction of a crossborder Kurdish identity. I will carry out detailed textual analysis of texts from KTV programs, such as excerpts from KTV’s news, history narratives, talk show discussions, and, finally, a weather forecast. Given the scope of this study and the kind of detailed analyses that are performed here, it is important to limit my data to a manageable body of texts and a limited set of analytical tools that I described in Chapter 2. The analyses are further informed by several studies of national identity that have used CDA approaches (e.g., Billig, 1995; Bishop & Jaworski, 2003; Chouliaraki, 1999; Higgins, 2004; Wodak et al., 1999). The objective of this chapter is to illustrate how various components of national identity discourse, or what Wodak et al. (1999) call “semantic-macro areas” of national identity discourse, are realized and materialized in different modes of communication, such as verbal and visual languages. (See Appendix 1 for a description of these tools.)