scholarly journals A Corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of the Discursive Representation of Immigration in the EU Referendum Debate

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ebtisam Saleh Aluthman
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Concordance Analysis ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Eu Referendum ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Eu

This paper presents a critical account of the representation of immigration in the Brexit corpus—a collective corpus of 108,452,923 words compiled mostly from blogs, tweets, and daily news related to Brexit debate. The study follows the methodological synergy approach proposed by Baker et al. (2008), a heuristic methodological approach that combines methods of discourse analysis and corpus-assisted statistical tools including keyword, collocation, and concordance analysis. Drawing on this methodological synergy approach, the investigation yields significant findings contextualized within the socio-economic-political context of the European Union (EU) leave referendum to trace how the issue of immigration is represented in the discourses of the Remain and Leave campaigns. The frequency results show that immigration is one of the most salient topics in the Brexit corpus. Concordance analysis of the word immigrants and collocation investigation of the word immigration reveal opposing attitudes toward immigration in the EU referendum debate. The analysis uncovers negative attitudes toward the uncontrolled flow of immigrants from other EU countries and public concerns about immigrants' negative impacts on wages, education, and health services. Other findings reveal positive attitudes toward immigrants emphasizing their positive contributions to the UK economy. The study concludes with an argument of the significant association between the political and socio-economic ideologies of a particular society and the language communicated in its media.

scholarly journals Romaphobia in Romanian press: The lifting of work restrictions for Romanian migrants in the European Union

2020 ◽  
pp. 175048132098215
Author(s):  
Petre Breazu ◽  
Göran Eriksson
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Eu

The lifting of work restrictions for Romanian and Bulgarian citizens in the EU, in January 2014, encountered much resistance both in European political discourse and the media, as these migrants became demonised and presented as social and economic threats. In this article, we show how the Romanian press dealt with such discriminatory discourses against the Romanian migrants. We conduct a thorough Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) of news items published in Romanian press, prior to the lifting of work restrictions, and we argue that the Roma emerged as the perfect scapegoats that could explain the deviant and unruly behaviours ascribed by some western media to ‘Romanians’. We also show how racism toward the Roma, referred here as Romaphobia, invokes non-racial practices and instead builds on a reverse victimhood narrative. Such discourses relate in a broader sense to well-established discursive practices in Romanian context but also to the political climate across Europe which is marked by increased intolerance toward the Roma. It is the mixture of stereotypical discourses and populist rhetoric that makes racism towards the Roma appear naturalised and increasingly more difficult to challenge.

scholarly journals The EU as a Choice: Populist and Technocratic Narratives of the EU in the Brexit Referendum Campaign

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Brusenbauch Meislová
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Economic Effects ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
General Level ◽  
Eu Referendum ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Discourse Historical Approach ◽  
Market Benefits ◽  
The Eu

The article investigates the main populist and technocratic narratives employed in the campaign in the run-up to the 2016 British EU referendum.  Based on a qualitative dataset comprising 40 selected speeches, interviews and other public interventions by prominent Leave and Remain protagonists and adopting the general orientation of the Discourse Historical Approach in Critical Discourse Analysis, the paper discusses how the language of the Remain and Leave camps bore signs of both populist and technocratic discourses. The key argument developed in this article is that while, at the most general level, the populist rhetoric was discursively appropriated by the Leave campaign (with the key narratives of the EU as a failure, EU as an oppressor and of anti-establishment fury) and the technocratic rhetoric by the Remain campaign (with the key narratives of the EU as a tool, the single market benefits and the withdrawal economic effects), the Remain side displayed a lower degree of narrative consistency.

scholarly journals The Status of the European Integration Process of the Western Balkan Countries

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Agata Domachowska ◽  
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Important Region ◽  
Balkan Countries ◽  
The Status ◽  
Balkan States ◽  
The Eu

For many years, the priority of foreign policy determined by subsequent governments of the six Western Balkan countries, i.e., Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia has been their accession to the European Union. Yet, in recent years, this process has slowed down, and so it can be assumed that in the coming years there will be no further enlargement of the EU to include any of the Western Balkan countries. The following article is aimed at analysing the present status of European integration with regard to the aforementioned states, and discusses the causes of regression in this process which can be identified on the side of the non-EU Western Balkan states and the European Union itself. Their integration is also a key issue in the context of the increasingly stronger presence of non-EU players such as China, Russia, and Turkey, all competing with the European Union for influence in this important region. The study was based on discourse analysis (including the critical discourse analysis approach) and content analysis.

15. The relationship of the UK with the European Union and Brexit

2020 ◽  
pp. 464-506
Author(s):  
Nigel Foster
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Future ◽  
Trade Relationship ◽  
Eu Referendum ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Eu

This chapter charts the long association of the UK with the EU. It considers all aspects of this relationship including pre membership, entry to the EC (EU), the first UK EU referendum in 1975 and the relationship over five decades. It considers how EU law was granted supremacy over UK law and how the courts viewed this. It considers the period up to and, including the 2016 UK EU referendum on exiting or remaining in the EU and the immediate consequences of that. Finally, and now most importantly, it looks at the negotiations and means by which the UK legally exited the EU on 31 January and the movement into the next stage of that relationship: the future trade relationship with the EU.

The European Union in Cyberspace

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Wodak ◽  
Scott Wright
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Relative Value ◽  
The Eu

This article analyses the European Union’s Futurum discussion forum. The EU hoped that Futurum would help close the acknowledged gap between institutions and citizens by facilitating a virtual, multilingual, transnational public sphere. Futurum was both an interesting example of how the EU’s language policies shape the structure of deliberative experiments and of a public debate about their relative value. We combine various quantitative measures of the discussions with a critical discourse analysis of a thread which focused on language policies. We found that although the debates were predominantly in English, where a thread started in a language other than English, linguistic diversity was more prominent. The discourse analysis showed that multilingual interaction was fostered, and that the debate about language policies is politically and ideologically charged.

scholarly journals Making Astrology Look Respectable: On the Extraordinary Abuse of Economic Models in the EU Referendum Debate

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. p15
Author(s):  
Professor David Blake
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Economic Models ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Eu Referendum ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Eu

In June 2016, I released an article entitled: “Measurement without Theory: On the extraordinary abuse of economic models in the EU Referendum debate” in advance of the referendum on 23 June 2016 on whether the UK should leave the European Union. That article heavily criticised two reports that had been released by the UK Treasury on the consequences of Brexit, calling them “dodgy dossiers” for “grossly exaggerating the impact of the economic consequences of Brexit and providing no analysis of the risks from remaining in the EU”. This article reproduces the 2016 article and also provides an update on the state of the UK economy five years after the publication of the reports. It confirms that the only purpose the two Treasury reports was to make astrology look respectable.

The Law & Politics of Brexit: Volume II

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
European Union ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Financial Settlement ◽  
The Eu

This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the withdrawal agreement concluded between the United Kingdom and the European Union to create the legal framework for Brexit. Building on a prior volume, it overviews the process of Brexit negotiations that took place between the UK and the EU from 2017 to 2019. It also examines the key provisions of the Brexit deal, including the protection of citizens’ rights, the Irish border, and the financial settlement. Moreover, the book assesses the governance provisions on transition, decision-making and adjudication, and the prospects for future EU–UK trade relations. Finally, it reflects on the longer-term challenges that the implementation of the 2016 Brexit referendum poses for the UK territorial system, for British–Irish relations, as well as for the future of the EU beyond Brexit.

scholarly journals Sustainability in the European Union: Analyzing the Discourse of the European Green Deal

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Eva Eckert ◽  
Oleksandra Kovalevska
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
European Commission ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Main Question ◽  
The European Union ◽  
International Media ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
The One ◽  
The Eu

In the European Union, the concern for sustainability has been legitimized by its politically and ecologically motivated discourse disseminated through recent policies of the European Commission and the local as well as international media. In the article, we question the very meaning of sustainability and examine the European Green Deal, the major political document issued by the EC in 2019. The main question pursued in the study is whether expectations verbalized in the Green Deal’s plans, programs, strategies, and developments hold up to the scrutiny of critical discourse analysis. We compare the Green Deal’s treatment of sustainability to how sustainability is presented in environmental and social science scholarship and point out that research, on the one hand, and the politically motivated discourse, on the other, do not correlate and often actually contradict each other. We conclude that sustainability discourse and its keywords, lexicon, and phraseology have become a channel through which political institutions in the EU such as the European Commission sideline crucial environmental issues and endorse their own presence. The Green Deal discourse shapes political and institutional power of the Commission and the EU.

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