The strategy of discourse construction of the Second World War in two European history textbooks: A comparative perspective

Abstract

This paper identifies strategies for the construction of discourse on the Second World War in two history textbooks published in the framework of two European projects. The main objective is to observe how different stratagems such as the semiotic device, lexical expressions, syntactic constructions, participate in the construction of a coherent narrative that shapes the collective memory on the discursive object of the Second World War. The dialogical character of the history textbook and its pedagogical aim, the essential and constitutive elements of the discursive strategy towards the readership conveying soft historical skills, are also questioned in the present paper.