Framing Kurdish Nationhood: A Socio-Cognitive Analysis of Mazloum Kobane’s Discourse

Abstract

  This study investigates how Mazloum Kobane's discourse controls and constructs knowledge about Kurdish national identity amid threats from ISIS, the Assad regime, and Turkey, and also examines the ideological and cognitive structures that create hegemonic discourse and influence collective understanding. The problem of the study is that there has been little analysis of the socio-cognitive processes of how Kobane’s language legitimizes knowledge, mobilizes unity, and frames the Kurdish struggle. Employing van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis, the current study investigates three levels: textual, including markers of evidentiality and intensifiers; cognitive, focusing on mental models of epistemic authority, shared schemata, and a future-oriented frame; and social, examining interdiscursivity, audience positioning, and performative nationhood. It concludes that Kobane’s discourse legitimizes Kurdish power strategically, reinforces collective identity, and frames the Kurdish struggle in both regional and global contexts, demonstrating that language in itself is an essential tool for asserting legitimacy, achieving unity, and maintaining Kurdish identity and nationhood.