Queen Elizabeth II and Paddington Bear: Some Features of a Popularity-Maintaining Discourse
Queen Elizabeth II and Paddington Bear: Some Features of a Popularity-Maintaining Discourse

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyses a short two-and-a-half-minute sketch, a video presented to theU.K. public on the occasion of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022.The BAFTA-winning video features Queen Elizabeth II receiving Paddington Bear, thefictional character in children’s literature, for tea at the Palace at the time of theJubilee party. For most people, this was one of the last images of the Queen making apublic appearance before her subsequent death in September that year. Herassociation with the endeared character proved to be exceptionally strong in thepublic conscience as representative for values that she wished to embody: politeness,kindness and tolerance, as the nation’s „grandmother” reassures, through herpresence, that her people has been properly inspired and imprinted by such qualities.The article focuses on linguistic, mainly pragmatic features of the characters’interaction, trying to determine how the monarch’s Image could be projected as adiscourse construct

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