Rappresentare l’italianità: retorica presidenziale e costruzione identitaria

The aim of this study is to investigate the discursive construction of Italian identity in presidential rhetoric, focusing particularly on the representations of Italian immigrants and second- and third-generation Italian Americans. The analysis examines a corpus of presidential speeches selected for the significance of their communicative context and uses the approach of Critical Discourse Analysis, integrated with Corpus Linguistics methodology to illustrate how the image of a composite yet unified American national identity seems to reflect a gradual reassessment of the value of minority immigrant groups.