European Identities in Discourse: A Transnational Citizens’ Perspective

About the Author

Franco Zappettini is Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at the University of Liverpool, UK.

David Machin is Professor of Media and Communication at Örebro University, Sweden.

JOHN E. RICHARDSON is Lecturer in Communications and Media Studies at Loughborough University, UK.

Michal Krzyzanowski is Chair in Media and Communication Studies at Örebro University, Sweden and Chair in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, UK.

Product Description

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.

Review

“This book offers an innovative approach to the 'question' of European identity from original transnational and grassroots perspectives. It insightfully combines Critical Discourse Analysis with political and sociological theories of the Europeanisation of the civil society.” ―Carlo Ruzza, Professor of Political Sociology, School of International Studies & Dept. of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy

“As a study of how young Europeans involved with a transnational NGO articulate their regional, national, European and cosmopolitan identities, this book offers ample evidence of the complexities and contradictions of discursively constructed notions of the self. The author seamlessly combines macro-level analysis of topics with micro-analysis of linguistic detail, bringing to life theoretical notions such as imagined communities, glocalisation and transnational flows. In looking at how transnational identities emerge at a grassroots level, the book provides an important complement to studies of institutional identities in the EU. This contribution is much needed in times of resurging nationalism within Europe and beyond.” ―Veronika Koller, Reader in Discourse Studies, Lancaster University, UK

“At a time when the very possibility of identifying with Europe has been denied by many, this book forcefully asserts the emergence of a discursively constructed new European identity suggesting on the basis of empirical research a transnational conception of European identity valid in times of globalization and cosmopolitan imaginaries.” ―Juliane House, Professor Emerita of Applied Linguistics, Hamburg University, Germany and Hellenic American University, Greece