Little Souna: Building a Sense of National Identity

1676 Words4 Pages

National identity can be defined as an imagined construction through discourses and rituals (Alane and Charles, 2008; Barker, 1999). It is both politically and culturally formed (Alane and Charles, 2008), which presents people with a sense of belonging to their nation states (Duncan, 2003). This essay is going to explore how the radio programme arouses a sense of national identity in its listeners, through the example of “Little Souna (In pinyin: suǒnà or lǎbā)”. It is a children’s radio programme targeted at the 5-year-old to the 7-year-old (Personal research, X, 2012; table in appendix), which contains stories, poetries, songs, broadcasting plays and interactions. The reason of choosing this programme is related to some researches, which claims that 5-year-old children began to talk about their national membership (Barrett, 2000). In that case, the analyses on the contributory role of “Little Souna” in nourishing children’s initial sense of national identity can make sense. There are three major parts of analyses on the “Little Souna” in the essay below: the first part concerns with the linguistics, where the function of language, sound and words will be examined; the second part is related to the traditional culture such as traditional music, traditional literature and traditional morality; the third part is a case study of Yushu earthquake, which also shows the power of the radio program in strengthening children’s sense of national identity.

To begin with, “Little Souna” takes advantage of linguistic power to implant national consciousness into its listeners. As Herder, Fichte and Humboldt addressed, ‘language is a defining essence of a nation’ (cited in Simpson, 2007). Chinese, doesn’t only unite the nation, but also symb...

... middle of paper ...

...evision, Globalization and Cultural Identities, Buckingham: Open University Press p7-8; 23-32;p64-69

(5)

Lorenzo-Dus, N. (2009) Television Discourse: analyzing language in the media, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan p184-191

(6)

Sonnenschein, D. (2001) Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice, and Sound Effects in Cinema, USA: McNaughton & Gunn

P82, p155, p179,p131p63 p77p104-107

(7)

Lv, J. (2007) 中文书名翻译还是英文？[Online]: http://cdmd.cnki.com.cn/Article/CDMD-10200-2007158298.htm (March 17th, 2012)

P4-11

（8）

Zhang, Z. (2005)

[Online]: http://lib.cqvip.com/read/detail.aspx?ID=15287239 (March 17th, 2012)

（9）

Hu, K. (2009)

[Online]: http://yuedu.baidu.com/book/view/08e187f36a67c7311d0692f3.html (March 17th, 2012)

（10）

Ren, X. and Wang, D. (2010)

[Online]: http://news.xinhuanet.com/society/2010-04/20/c_1244573.htm (March 17th, 2012)

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