National Identity and Europe in Times of Crisis Doing and Undoing Europe

The 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.

Europeanness is challenged by the multiple crises and debates happening across the continent. There is long-standing disagreement over Europe’s boundaries, and politicians and citizens continually reflect on the EU’s past, present and future. This book analyses such reflections and political struggles in a variety of national and local contexts.

- Introduction: Discursively doing and undoing Europe
- Transnationalism as an index to construct European identities: an analysis of ‘trans-European’ discourses
- Discursively “undoing” and “doing Europe” the Austrian way
- Britain, Bulgaria and benefits: the political rhetoric of European (dis)integration
- European security under threat: mediating the crisis and constructing the Other
- Europe and the Front National Stance: Shifting the Blame
- Circling the wagons: the alternative für Deutschland and the rise of Eurosceptic populism in Germany
- From national consensus to a new cleavage? The discursive negotiation of Europe in the Greek public debate during the economic crisis, 2010-2015
- Towards a (dis)integrated Europe: the constructs of “Europe” and “Troika” versus “Portugal” and “the Portuguese” in a corpus of Portuguese opinion articles
- Doing or undoing Europe critically in the Lisbon Treaty debate. A corpus-based analysis of British newspapers
- Between Agendas: Macedonian National Identity between Europe and its Multicultural Agenda
- Settling accounts with the troublesome past: self-criticism in Poland and Eastern Europe
- Epilogue

Christian Karner is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Nottingham.

Monika Kopytowska received her Ph.D from the University of Lodz, Poland, where she works in the Department of Pragmatics. Her research interests revolve around identity, media discourse and the representation of conflict, ethnicity, and religion.