Linguistic Representation of Nostalgia in Contemporary French-Language Discourses

The purpose of the study was to identify linguistic means of representing nostalgia in contemporary French-language discourse. The material was a corpus of 120 texts of media, political, advertising, and literary discourses that came from four Francophone regions (France, Quebec, Belgium, and Francophone Africa). The research methodology included content analysis to identify the frequency of nostalgic markers, semantic analysis to investigate semantic patterns, and discourse and comparative analysis to identify structural and regional differences. During the analysis, the dominance of nominative (28.5%) and temporal (23.7%) markers was recorded, which indicated explicit verbalization of nostalgia. The temporal opposition of “then—now” proved to be key in structuring the nostalgic narrative, with “nostalgia as a journey” and “nostalgia as a disease” dominating as metaphors. Regional analysis revealed the highest level of explicitness in Quebec and the highest emotional intensity in Francophone Africa. Political discourse showed the highest proportion of nostalgic strategies (31.4%) with a dominant legitimizing function. In the digital environment, transformations of discourse were recorded—in particular, new genre forms in social networks that contributed to the development of affective communities. The practical significance of the study was to deepen the understanding of the relationship between language, emotions, and cultural identity, which has potential applications in cross-cultural communication, media analysis, critical discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and the educational environment. The results can be used to develop strategies for emotional impact, form culturally sensitive communication, maintain social cohesion, and preserve collective historical memory in a globalized world.