Raoul, Bruno
Territory as a communicational object: Between “symbolic third party” and “social discourse.” A media perspective
- 2017.
39
This article shows, through some examples, how territorial markers and spatial indications can be identified in media discourse. It then explains how—by referring to spatial matter and forms and so to the history and memory specific to a community (of inhabitants)—a territory involves a “socio-spatial imagination” that is federative, partaking of a “symbolic third party.” However, whereas it is by word and by discourse that the territory takes on such a social function, the article explains how the territory—beyond the source of a founding word (its name)—is supplied by a “discursive fund” in order to be apparent, legible, identified, and justified. As a hypothesis, the author proposes that a “territorial discourse” exists and can be fitted into the global “social discourse.”