The article examines a discursive analysis of a lesson plan case study to identify how pupils are interpellated into an imagined community of bearers of human rights. The process of interpellation can be traced through language use as the site and tool of pedagogical practice. The rhetorical method, derived from Aristotle’s rhetorical apparatus, was applied to analyse the latter. In the study, several moments of interpellation through the discourse were discussed – the establishment of a sentimental image of the ‘universal community’, creating a distinction from societies that are temporally and spatially distant and presumed to violate human rights, and the ‘independent’ pronouncement of condemnation for rights violations. Analysing the processes of interpellation through language use in the pedagogical process demonstrates its unforeseen, inexplicit and often contradictory effects. Through them, a fissure inherent in the ideological construction of human rights itself is indicated; by invoking their universality, specific modes of exclusion are established and reproduced.
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