Rolul limbilor naturale în geneza identităţilor naţionale. Limba română ca resursă semiotică în construirea identităţii culturale

Abstract

The 100th Great Union Celebration can be a „semiotic resource" (van Leeuwen) for the national identity of the Romanians, but this means answering some questions: what kind of identity will it be necessary to reinforce or restart the commemorative ceremonies? Or would it be more profitable to resettle national identity, to adapt it to the new historical conditions, called genetically „globalization"? In answering these questions, we should respond to others: Is the national identity permanent or is it redefined from one historical period to the next one? Should the 100th Celebration encourage Romanians to remain as they are, or should encourage them to change, to accept change, and to show them those things which need to be changed in order to be successfull in the XXIst Century? There is no unique definition of national identity in the literature but some authors propose a classification of the main dimensions of the concept: the subjective belief of a person about the nation to which it formally belongs or would like to belong; the importance of national self-identification in relation to other elements of identity (ethnicity, language, religion etc.); emotions and feelings about the nation.
After the american anthropologists B. L. Whorf and E. Sapir launched the theory of linguistic determination of world visions (1921), more and more researchers have come to the conclusion that the fate of people is strongly influenced by their native language; this gives them the mental categories that allow them to think of the world and understand their place in it. The language in which we think and dream defines us in the sense that it gives us an identity; moreover, it opens us and, at the same time, limits our possibilities for knowledge and self-knowledge. That is why the Romanian language can be used as a semiotic resource in the reconstruction of the Romanians' national identity. In the paper, we try to show what is to be done in order that the 100th Celebration should take place in a decent, responsible and instructive context, rejecting ethnocentric excesses, ethnic-religious speculation, encouraging self-knowledge of the Romanian nation, promoting civic, responsible patriotism, a "nationalism in the limits of truth", as Mihai Eminescu demanded in his time.