The Role of Natural Languages in the Genesis of National Identities

The centenary of the Great Union can be a "semiotic resource" (van Leeuwen) for the national identity of the Romanians, but this challenges (requires) us to answer several questions: what kind of identity will the commemorative ceremonies have to reinforce or restart? Or would it be more profitable to reset the national identity, to adapt it to the new historical conditions, genetically called "globalization"? To answer these questions, we should answer others: Is national identity immutable, a historical, or is it re-defined from one historical era to another? The centenary should encourage Romanians to remain as they are, or should urge them to change, encourage them to accept change and show them the things to change, with which they cannot be successful in 21st century? In specialized literature there is no single definition of national identity, but some authors propose a classification of the main dimensions of the concept: the subjective conviction of a person regarding the nation to which he formally belongs, or would like to belong; the importance of national self-identification in relation to other elements of identity (ethnicity, language, religion, etc.); emotions and feelings about the nation. After the American anthropologists B. L. Whorf and E. Sapir launched the theory of linguistic determination of worldviews (1921), more and more researchers came to the conclusion that the fate of people is strongly influenced by their mother tongue; this gives them the mental categories that allow them to think about the world and understand their place in it. The language in which we think and dream defines us, in the sense that it gives us an identity; moreover, it opens up and, at the same time, limits our possibilities of knowledge and self-knowledge. This is why the Romanian language can be used as a semiotic resource in the reconstruction of the national identity of the Romanians. In the present paper, we try to show what we should do so that the Centennial anniversary takes place on a decent, responsible and instructive note, to sanction ethnocentric excesses, ethno-religious speculations, to encourage self-knowledge of the Romanian nation, to promote civic patriotism, responsible and documented, a "nationalism at the edges of the truth", as Mihai Eminescu demanded in his time.