Construction of national French identity in Children's textbooks

The research for the dissertation on "the construction of French national identity in the textbooks for children" is aimed towards a descriptive analysis of the foundations of French national identity. The research is based on the portrayal of French national identity in the history and civic education textbooks for primary and secondary schools. The theoretical part represents a notion of culture, nation and collective memory as key elements for the construction of national identity. The discourses used in textbooks are presented as a tool for the handover of cultural elements and a medium for the construction of a cultural reality. Consequently, through methods of discourse analysis, the dissertation focuses on identifying elements of discourse in the textbooks' contents that testify of French culture. On the basis of the results extracted from the research, the self-image of French nationality is then reconstructed. Subsequently, the national self-conception emerging from the textbooks is compared to the one drawn through the new year's presidential speeches between the years 2012 to 2018. The aim of this comparison is to assess whether these two models of French identity hold evident distinctions or if they are constructed on similar foundations. Keywords National identity, France, culture,..