Integrarea minorităţilor în discursul politic din Republica Moldova
Integration of Minorities in the Public Discourse from Republic of Moldova

Summary/Abstract: According to the last 2004 census, minorities in the Republic of Moldova - Ukrainians, Russians, Gagauz , Bulgarians and Romanians -make up some 24.2% of the population along the Moldovan majority. These minorities live today in a state that can be considered a "nationalizing" state, following the concept proposed by Rogers Brubaker, a state where the authorities are trying to build a nation-state following the classic model of the nineteenth century. In this state, however, several trends can be observed and there is not a fixed definition of what the Moldovan nation is. Generally speaking, Moldovanists insist on a separate nation and people while Romanianists insist on the unity of Moldovans and Romanians. The article examines this civic nation at the discursive level. Following a methodology inspired by the Vienna School of Critical Discourse Analysis, speeches by President Vladimir Voronin while he was in power between 2001 and 2009 are analyzed. As his discourse can be seen as belonging to the Moldovanist inclusive tendancy, the aim is primarily to determine which role is played by minorities in these speeches. The speeches are then compared with the speeches by interim President of the Republic of Moldova in 2009-2010, Mihai Ghimpu, representing the opposite Romanianist trend. Continuing the analysis proposed by authors such as Vladimir Solonari and Stefan Ihrig, the article demonstrates that in Moldova, despite the fact that the country is sometimes presented as a model of a civic nation, members of minority groups are considered tolerated "foreigners" and that the Moldovan society in the studied period seemed to be developing, at least discursively, without taking minorities into account.

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