How patriotic discourse informs territorial politics: discursive construction of love, path, and leadership

This research challenges the conventional distinction between patriotism and nationalism and conceptualises patriotism as an open-ended discursive resource whose meaning and effects emerge through situated analysis. Using China’s official discourse on the Taiwan question as a case study, we examine how patriotic discourse informs territorial politics, demonstrating the value of situated analysis. Drawing on Ahmed’s notion of nation as an effect of collective movement and applying the DHA, we analyse how China invokes patriotism in its framing of the Taiwan question. The analysis of the 41 presidential remarks reveals how patriotism is invoked and mobilised in state discourse through historical narratives, continuity framing, metaphorical conceptualisation, and argumentation strategies. Moreover, by distilling patterns from explicit elements in China’s official discourse, we conceptualise patriotism as a regulated trajectory comprising ‘orientation’, ‘prescribed path’, and ‘guiding force’ for examining how meanings of patriotism are channelled in territorial politics.