Voicing a Nation

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Jalal Talabani’s Rhetoric on Kurdish Identity and Ethnic Oppression

Abstract

This paper examines the rhetoric of the late Jalal Talabani to answer to what extent he constructed the Kurdish identity and provided a clear illustration of the ongoing ethnic discrimination and subjugation of Kurds. Despite Talabani's pivotal place in Kurdish political history, very few scholars have utilized his earlier discourse to identify and analyse structures of ethnic discrimination and collective suffering. This study fills that gap by addressing the language role as a tool of national identity assertion through an analysis of Talabani’s speeches. This is qualitative research with Critical Discourse Analysis based on van Dijk's socio-cognitive model, which considers discourse at three levels: textual, cognitive and social. The strategy facilitates investigation of linguistic devices such as lexical choice, repetition, and passivation at the textual level; intertextuality, polarization, and implicit at the cognitive level; and power relations, ethnic and social inequality, legitimacy and representation, and victimhood or heroism at the social level. These markers can help to reveal the way Talabani’s discourse creates and reinforces Kurdish identity in an environment of ethnic oppression. It concludes that Talabani's associated rhetoric works as a strategic discursive force to raise the Kurdish struggle from the political resistance to an identity formation act. Talabani uses intentional language and socio-cognitive framing to aggregate pain into a story of common suffering and collective resistance. Utilizing emotionally charged data and historical allusions, he reframes Kurdish identity not simply as a product of past victimization but rather as a method to future empowerment through rhetorical polarization itself.