ABSTRACT

Communicating Europe Europe’s current crisis is not only political and economic: it is also a crisis of discursive narratives. If the ‘language’ of Europe seems unable to provide institutional legitimacy and policy guidance, recent events have also shown the dangers of rhetorical simplification and the need for new narratives aimed at addressing emerging social issues and changes in the stakeholders of public discourse. Part III of this volume contains a selection of case studies on discourses and counter-discourses that contribute to the definition of a European ‘public sphere’. These are discussed from a multidisciplinary perspective, involving linguistics, sociology and political science specialists, and making extensive use of language analysis and representations. A common thread running through the chapters is the way that they highlight narratives of Europe that fall outside established traditional or mainstream models, while not concentrating exclusively on offering critiques of those models. Instead, the chapters focus on ‘side issues’ by adopting a counterintuitive approach. While Chapters 8 and 9 look at discursive practices taking place ‘inside’ Europe, Chapters 10 and 11 concentrate on languages of Europe as seen from the ‘outside’. Chapter 8 observes the effects of alter-globalist counter-discourses, as set out by the ATTAC association, on reports on women’s rights issued by the European Parliament between 2004 and 2012. Discourse analysts usually describe international discourse as neutral and void of conflict, which from a European perspective would mean that counter-discourses about EU politics, society and identity are neutral. However, a close study of the available data reveals a complex relationship between discourse and counter-discourse. In the case of women’s rights, one can observe how the ATTAC counter-discourse has influenced the rhetoric of the European Parliament and how the effect of this influence is different in the English and French versions of EU reports. The chapter thus looks at this influence from the perspective of discourse and translation theory and practice. The media are central actors in the European integration process, as they influence the cognitive environment in which public opinion develops. In the

attempt to reduce perception of the so-called democratic deficit, EU institutions have paid increasing attention to communication policies and to defining a European communication strategy, which has recently been oriented towards strengthening relations with local media and taking advantage of opportunities provided by social media. Despite this extensive institutional effort, when one looks at the discursive outcomes one realizes that ‘Europe’ is paradoxically less present where one would expect to find it most, and vice versa. Chapter 9 explains the attitudes of the Italian media regarding public discourses about Europe. It analyses the issues that recur most frequently and looks at a range of media settings, as well as using data collected to study the dominant representation of Europe in a variety of media, such as newspapers, news broadcasts and Twitter. The main focus of the chapter is on the recent EU Parliamentary election. The analysis of the language of the Italian campaign for the European elections shows that Europe is mostly absent from political and party discourse, which continues to be mainly dominated by domestic issues and confrontation between national parties. Moreover, old media, where Europe still occupies a niche, remain more attentive to European issues than new media. But how is Europe communicated when seen from the outside? Chapters 10 and 11 show that Europe can be perceived both as a large, weak entity whose identity is diluted into a more general ‘West’, yet at the same time also as a reliable – even strong and attractive – partner and actor within the international system. Chapter 10 discusses ISIS’ communicative strategies as a memetic activity, where terminologies, discourses and narratives of the ‘enemy’, i.e. the West and Europe, are re-appropriated and spun in order to satisfy the organization’s own needs. Analysts agree that ISIS demonstrates specific skills in managing different media and that it can articulate message production with a distinctive ‘western’ style, supporting the impression that its public diplomacy follows memetic criteria. The chapter carries out a comparative analysis of ISIS publications (in particular Dabiq magazine, published in English) as compared to the NATO doctrine, in order to show how the memetic process can be reversed and to pose the question of who learns from whom in this game of mirrors, in which codes are re-appropriated and legitimized. Dabiq’s discourses on Europe’s portray it as having a marginal influence in NATO, seeing it only as an enemy or ally of the US, and therefore the target of an asymmetrical narrative that rests on Europe’s political weaknesses. On the other hand, Chapter 11 looks at how Europe is represented and understood in negotiation processes between the EU and non-member states. By virtue of its long-lasting relationship with the EU and its member states, Tunisia before and after the ‘Jasmine revolution’ is used as a case study to shed light on the role of perceptions in shaping and (re-)framing the relationship in the context of pivotal policy areas such as that of migration and mobility. The findings suggest new ways of looking at EU foreign policies and Euro-Mediterranean relations, thus filling the gap in a debate on the external image of the EU that so far has mainly been focused on the internal impact of outward perceptions.