Discourses of Borders and the Nation in the USA

Massimiliano Demata is Associate Professor of English at the University of Turin. He was a Fulbright scholar in Yale (1999) and Indiana University (2014) and has held Visiting Professorships at Saarland University (2020), Sciences Po Lyon (2021), and OTH Regensburg (2022). He is the co-editor of the Journal of Language and Discrimination and has published on populist discourse, Trump’s rhetoric, metaphors of the nation and social media discourse.

• Table of contentsIntroductionChapter 1 Borders, Nations and Security in the Age of PopulismTheoretical framework and methodology: the Discourse-Historical ApproachBorders and the Nation: Discourses of Inclusion and ExclusionFrom bordered to borderless – and back. Borders, populism and the politics of security (and insecurity)Chapter 2 The Trump Wall. The Discourse and the Aesthetics of ExclusionThe border wall: security and the nationThe Beautiful Wall. Borders and the Discourse of Real EstateBranding Trump and the Trump WallChapter 3 The Progressive Rhetoric of BordersDemocrats and "open borders"From nation separation to family separation. Borders and the strength of the "nation of immigrants"The modern (and effective) borderConclusionsReferences

"This is a thought-provoking book on the notion of border. By relying on Anderson's notion of 'imagined community', Demata successfully explain how the border is an ideological construct. To do so, he explores Donald Trump's aesthetic conceptualisation of "The Wall" as a commodity and of Democrats' appeal to security and moral values. While different constructions can be found, Demata convincingly shows how the notion of 'border' is exploited in political discourse for legitimising the existence of a (differently-constructed) nation". Laura Filardo-Llamas, Senior Lecturer in English Linguistics, Universidad de Valladolid "This book contains an extensive case study about ‘Trump’s beautiful wall’, promoted and branded as unique, as protecting the US from so-called illegal immigration. Borders are contested in this case; on the one hand, ‘closed borders’ are promoted, on the other, ‘open borders’, with a range of different arguments, some of which are necessarily fallacious. However, both sides promise security and border management. Theoretically and methodologically, this book is an outstanding example of context-dependent qualitative discourse-historical analysis which allows tracing Trump’s propaganda step-by -step, both visually and textually. Such differentiated and detailed case studies allow understanding and explaining the success of far-right ethno-nationalist populist body- and border politics, integrated into a populist politics of fear. A must-read for scholars and graduate students alike".Ruth Wodak, Distinguished Professor and Chair in Discourse Studies, Lancaster University/University Vienna"As populist and neoliberal discourses contend to define a post-global world, Demata reminds us how borders—including the plights of those attempting tocross them—can serve as symbols of social order as well as proxies for political struggle. Although brief, his study offers important insights into how the recontextualisation of political discourses, namely, of family values, the aesthetics of exclusion, and the neoliberal ethics of modernity, contribute to ideological discursive formation and contemporary political language." Chris Featherman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Language in Society 52 (2023)"Demata brilliantly applies the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) developed by Ruth Wodak to explore how discourses of the nation have served to include or exclude the 'other.'...This well-written book is a must-read for scholars and graduate students interested in discourse analysis and border studies. Demata’s book adds to previous studies that applied discourse analysis in global affairs."Claudia Veronica Donoso, St. Mary's University, Journal of Borderlands Studies (2023)"This short but very rich and detailed monograph is a valuable instrument for graduate and post-graduate students and scholars interested in political discourse analysis or immigration discourse. It provides a clear and in-depth overview of nation-building rhetorical strategies and the role of borders as otherisation devices in the post-truth era. The qualitative approach adopted and the diversified data sources employed are especially helpful in presenting the multifarious and interconnected aspects of the phenomenon’s complexity."Maria Ivana Lorenzetti, University of Verona, Iperstoria 22 (2023)"At a historical moment in which populist messages are not only growing, but completely stabilizing, Demata’s study is particularly interesting, since it focuses attention on the discursive and propagandistic use of the concepts of wall and border...In summary, Demata’s work is valuable for its contribution to the development of critical discourse analysis, as well as for its clarity in exposing the different concepts and [their] didactic capacity..."Albert Martí Ferrer, University of Valencia, Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 10:1 (2024)