ABSTRACT
The hypothesis presented in the introduction was that discourse analysis of four concepts in Britain and France – nation/state, Europe, security and the nature of international relations – is able to explicate British and French policies towards Europe in the 1980s. Chapter 1 gave an account of the theoretical framework for discourse analysis and its usage in foreign policy. The analysis of the four concepts for the two countries was presented in chapters 2 and 3. An attempt was made in chapter 4 to explicate the European policies of Britain and France in the 1980s by reference to the discourses on the four concepts. The findings were summarised in the final section of chapter 4. I found that the general lines of the two countries’ European policies lay within, and were shaped by, the framework provided by the discourses on the four concepts.
