Description
Book SynopsisThe European Union currently finds itself in the midst of its most profound crises since its creation. In the minds and writings of many commentators, politicians and European citizens, these multiple contemporary crises call the very future of the European project into doubt. Against the backdrop of economic and political crises across the continent, this edited collection examines the discursive workings and processes underpinning both the centrifugal and the centripetal political forces currently reshaping Europe and individual nation-states.
This volume strikes an original balance between inter-disciplinary work and a shared analytical engagement with the different methodologies and conceptual approaches provided by political linguistics. This is an edited collection that explores the linguistic manifestations of the competing political forces currently being negotiated within European nation-states and between them.
The chapters explore the different triggers, dimensions and reactions to recent and current crises across a range of European settings. Crises are thereby shown to give rise to com-plex political fields, in which different assessments and ideological blueprints compete for voters’ attention and support. Nationalism, as the currently most prominent political force, is shown to require analyses capable of shedding light on its wider contexts and its political competitors.
Trade ReviewThe result of intellectual debate, exchange and refinement, this volume contains a selection of the theoretically most sophisticated and empirically most thorough papers first presented in Warsaw and subsequently refined by the authors. Karner and Kopytowska selected contributors who altogether stretch across as much geographical space and as diverse a set of historical and contemporary experiences as possible. Consequently, the chapters that follow collectively cover large parts of Western, Central and Eastern Europe, the continent’s North as well as its Mediterranean South. They illustrate and analyze how political institutions and social relations are continually being done, re-done, and—particularly in periods of crisis—partly underdone. They pay particular attention to the roles played by linguistic and other semiotic practices in such crucial, albeit widely taken-for-granted, processes of ongoing social reproduction and (occasional) transformation. -- Annotation ©2017 * (protoview.com) *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Discursively doing and undoing Europe;
Christian Karner, Anna Duszak, Monika Kopytowska Transnationalism as an index to construct European identities: an analysis of ‘trans-European’ discourses;
Franco Zappettini Discursively “undoing” and “doing Europe” the Austrian way;
Christian Karner Britain, Bulgaria and benefits: the political rhetoric of European (dis)integration;
James Moir European security under threat: mediating the crisis and constructing the Other;
Monika Kopytowska & Łukasz Grabowski Europe and the Front National Stance: Shifting the Blame;
Fabienne Baider and Maria Constantinou Circling the wagons: the alternative für Deutschland and the rise of Eurosceptic populism in Germany;
Christian Nestler and Jan Rohgalf From national consensus to a new cleavage? The discursive negotiation of Europe in the Greek public debate during the economic crisis, 2010-2015;
Zinovia Lialiouti Towards a (dis)integrated Europe: the constructs of “Europe” and “Troika” versus “Portugal” and “the Portuguese” in a corpus of Portuguese opinion articles;
Alexandra Pinto Doing or undoing Europe critically in the Lisbon Treaty debate. A corpus-based analysis of British newspapers;
Chiara Nasti Torn Between Agendas: Macedonian National Identity between Europe and its Multicultural Agenda;
Maja Muhic Settling accounts with the troublesome past: self-criticism in Poland and Eastern Europe;
Magdalena Nowicka Epilogue;
Christian Karner and Monika Kopytowska
