TRANSFORMATION OF BRITISH NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM IN THE PERIOD OF 2025-2026 (BASED ON THE CONCEPT OF “SOVEREIGNTY”)

Abstract

The present article is devoted to the study of the transformation of British national identity in the newspaper discourse of the United Kingdom during the period of 2025–2026 through the prism of the concept of “sovereignty.” The focus of the research is the process of discursive construction of national identity as both a sovereign and crisis-related category reflecting the contradictory socio-political and cultural processes of the post-Brexit period.

The aim of the study is to identify the peculiarities of the representation and transformation of British national identity in the newspaper discourse of the United Kingdom in 2025–2026 on the basis of the concept of “sovereignty,” as well as to determine its cognitive-discursive functions in the process of constructing the image of contemporary “Britishness” within the post-Brexit socio-political reality.

The theoretical and practical significance of the research lies in its contribution to the development of media linguistics, linguocognitive studies, and critical discourse analysis. The study broadens the understanding of the mechanisms of discursive construction of national identity in the contemporary British media space and clarifies the role of the concept of “sovereignty” as a key ideologeme of post-Brexit newspaper discourse. The research materials may be applied in the development of teaching and methodological materials, as well as in further scholarly works devoted to British media discourse, issues of national identity, and the linguistic representation of socio-political processes in the English-language media. The obtained results contribute to further investigation of the interrelation between language, media, and national consciousness under conditions of political and cultural transformation of society.

The research material consists of texts from leading British newspapers representing the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom – The Guardian, The Scotsman, Wales Online, and Belfast Telegraph – in which stable narrative strategies of representing “Britishness” under conditions of both internal and external instability are identified. The methodological framework includes elements of critical discourse analysis, the linguocognitive approach, and corpus analysis, which make it possible to identify key ideologemes and conceptual metaphors structuring the image of national identity.

The analysis revealed that British identity in contemporary media discourse is constructed through a dual opposition: on the one hand, the idea of sovereignty, historical continuity, and the political subjectivity of the United Kingdom is emphasized; on the other hand, a discourse of crisis is actualized through metaphors of fragmentation, uncertainty, and loss of unity.