ABSTRACT
As part of the larger topic of 'Attitudes Towards Europe', this chapter deals with the sub-topic of the European monetary union. It focuses on the career of the name for the common currency adopted by the members of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) - Euro - and its rendition in German press texts from 1995 to 1999. The chapter demonstrates the communicative power behind the various linguistic realisations of the theme word Euro. Not only is it regarded merely as the name for the common currency of the members of the EMU; instead, on a larger scale it may act as a crystallisation nucleus towards the concept of an integrated Europe. The chapter outlines the factual background as necessary for the understanding of the subject, and explains the methods. It describes the grammatical and morphological properties of the lexeme Euro. The chapter contains the analytic and interpretative parts and presents the lexical evidence for each of the chronological sections.
