FROM SPEECH TO SYMBOL: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF JELTOQSAN IN OFFICIAL DISCOURSE

Abstract: The December 1986 protests in Almaty, known in Kazakh as Jeltoqsan, occupy a central place in the national narrative of independent Kazakhstan. This article examines how the movement has become a founding symbol of the state and what role presidential discourse plays in that process. Drawing on the literature on political culture, strategic culture and the formation of national memory, it asks how President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev's statements on Jeltoqsan contribute to the shaping of Kazakh national consciousness. The study adopts a qualitative design combining content analysis and discourse analysis. A corpus of Tokayev's addresses, articles and official statements on Jeltoqsan from 2019 to 2022 is first coded thematically and then analysed for its discursive strategies—nomination, predication, temporal linkage and legitimation—following the discourse-historical approach. The findings show that official discourse presents Jeltoqsan as a feat of civic heroism; that it constructs a continuous line from 16 December 1986 to 16 December 1991; and that it assigns the state a sacred duty of remembrance together with the task of writing a modern national history. The article argues that these discursive moves embed the movement in Kazakhstan's strategic culture as a reference point for national values, and that the president's own formation—a literary family, a diplomatic career, service to the independent state—gives the narrative its coherence. It concludes by discussing the implications of elite memory-making for the study of national consciousness in post-Soviet states.