In this volume we approach the question of what it is to be European by considering the way in which citizens talk about their everyday lives, as they are perceived against the background of Europe and European issues. Hence, the volume will offer insights into the rarely glimpsed micro political world of ordinary talk and explore the way in which such talk in social interaction and other spheres might help us understand what Europe means to a range of its citizens. Using a range of broadly discursive approaches we will touch on, inter alia, issues of identity, youth, borders, ethnicity, local politics, and minority languages. In the end, we suggest, it is a common sense view of pragmatic utility that centres what it is to be European, and this is something which is continually fluid and shifting within ever changing social, historical and political circumstances.

This volume brings together specialists from a range of disciplines to discuss the discursive construction of ethnic, national and regional identities and analyse how specific identity discourses condition and constrain knowledge and action with regard to various socio-political issues in Europe.

European Identity examines how Europe is represented linguistically in the news media of four EU countries, France, Italy, Poland, and the UK, through the use of an electronic corpus built from newspapers and television news transcripts. This multilingual comparable corpus, is composed of the entire contents of four newspapers published in each country, collected over two periods of three months, and the transcriptions of two TV news broadcasts, collected over two periods of two months. The theoretical and methodological frameworks adopted include discourse analysis, corpus linguistics and corpus-assisted discourse analysis. The individual chapters investigate various aspects of European identity as it is discursively construed in the news media of the different countries, such as Europe as a political and geographic entity, European Union institutions, European history, citizenship, and immigration. Based on a bottom-up orientation and using both quantitative and qualitative methods, all chapters but one use a comparative approach to the data, juxtaposing the journalist representations of Europe in two or more languages. The fundamental aim of the volume is to demonstrate how linguistic analysis, and in particular the study of large amounts of linguistic data, can make a vital contribution to the analysis of political and social issues

This book examines EU discourses on Turkey in the European Commission, European Parliament and three EU member states (France, Germany and Britain), to reveal the discursive construction of European identity through EU representations of Turkey. Based on a poststructuralist framework that conceptualizes identity as discursively constructed through difference, the book applies Critical Discourse Analysis to the analysis of texts and argues that there are multiple Europe(s) that are constructed in talks over the enlargement of Turkey, varying within and between different ideological, national and institutional contexts. The book discerns four main discourse topics over which these Europe(s) are constructed, corresponding to the conceptualization of Europe as a security community, as an upholder of democratic values, as a political project and as a cultural space. The book argues that Turkey constitutes a key case in exploring various discursive constructs of European identity, since the talks on Turkey pave the way for the construction of different versions of Europe in discourse.

This book examines EU discourses on Turkey in the European Commission, European Parliament and three EU member states (France, Germany and Britain), to reveal the discursive construction of European identity through EU representations of Turkey. Based on a poststructuralist framework that conceptualizes identity as discursively constructed through difference, the book applies Critical Discourse Analysis to the analysis of texts and argues that there are multiple Europe(s) that are constructed in talks over the enlargement of Turkey, varying within and between different ideological, national and institutional contexts. The book discerns four main discourse topics over which these Europe(s) are constructed, corresponding to the conceptualization of Europe as a security community, as an upholder of democratic values, as a political project and as a cultural space. The book argues that Turkey constitutes a key case in exploring various discursive constructs of European identity, since the talks on Turkey pave the way for the construction of different versions of Europe in discourse.

This book looks at the discursive construction of European identities in a variety of institutional and non-institutional contexts and through a variety of social and political actors. Its multilevel and interdisciplinary approach - rooted in the Discourse-Historical tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis - allows for a comparison of identity constructions at different levels of Europe's social and political organisation and in different modes of communication. The book analyses discourses as diverse as those of the EU politicians, of Europe's national media as well as of migrants living in Europe. It offers a set of integrated models and analytical procedures which bring to the fore the inherent dynamism and complexity of both 'bottom-up' and 'top-down' European identity constructions.

Based on empirical research, this book closely analyses how European identities are discursively produced. It focuses on discourse from members of a civic association active in promoting democracy and attempting participation in the transnational public sphere. Unlike previous books that have addressed the question of European identity from top-down stances or through methodological nationalism, this book engages with the multifaceted concept of transnationalism as a key to the negotiation of 'glocal' identities. Applying a discourse historical approach (DHA) through a transnational reading, it shows how grassroots actors/speakers construct their different cultural and political affiliations as both world and European citizens. They negotiate institutional identities and historical discourses of nationhood through new forms of mobility, cultural diversity and the imagination of Europe as a proxy for a cosmopolitan civil society. These discourses are ever more important in a fractured and polarised Europe falling prey to contrary discourses of nationhood and ethnic solidarity. Highlighting how transnational narratives of solidarity and the de-territorialisation of civic participation can impact on the (re)imagination of the European community beyond tropes like 'Fortress Europe' or intragovernmental politics, this important book shows how identification processes must be read through historical and global as well as localised contexts.