Emotions in European parliamentary debates: Passionate speakers or un-emotional gentlemen?

Abstract

This article analyses the verbal display and role of emotions in the European Parliament (EP). Contributing both to European Studies and Parliamentary studies, this article shows how emotions are expressed and how they reflect power and status dynamics. Emotions are indeed used differently depending on the power position of Members of the EP (MEPs). This article also reveals that emotions may play a role in crisis situations by constraining the choices and policy solutions under consideration. This qualitative study compares parliamentary debates on two of the most relevant recent crises before 2020: the refugee crisis (2014–2017) and the economic crisis (2009–2014). Empirical evidence is drawn from the systematic in-depth content analysis of 25 EP debates.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Tables 3, 4, 5, 6 , 7 and 8 .

Table 3 Emotions on debates on the refugee crisis

Table 4 Emotions in debates on the economic crisis

Table 5 Emotions used by political actors in debates on the economic crisis

Table 6 Emotions used by political actors in debates on the refugee crisis

Table 7 Use of keywords pointing to a fearmongering strategy in debates on refugee crisis

Table 8 Use of shame (in different languages) by MEP in debates on the refugee crisis

Appendix 2: Original of the text translated into English by the author

Het is geen lege flessen inruilen voor volle flessen. Het zijn mensen die zoeken naar een veilige plek. Judith Sargentini, Greens/ALE, 8-3-2016.

C’est une nouvelle preuve qu’elle es tune oligarchie technocratique qui se moque des peuples europeens, de leurs identites et de leurs aspirations. Gilles Lebreton, ENF. 12-04-2016.

Madame la Présidente, vous êtes un petit peu comme des Sisyphes. La Commission a en effet pris la mesure de l'ampleur de la crise et, après trois paquets d'actions, après des évaluations, après des sommets qui se sont succédés, la mise en œuvre aujourd'hui reste brinquebalante, voire désespérante, puisque les États, chaque soir, défont ce que vous avez monté le matin. Nathalie Griesbeck, ALDE, 8-3-2016.

Was dieser Tage im Mittelmeer passiert, ist eine Schande für die Politik und eine Schande für Europa. Eugen Freund, S&D, 29-04-2015.

Mettons en place un programme de réinstallation ambitieux, au-delà de ce chiffre honteusement bas de 5 000 réfugiés. Offrons à ces migrants qui sont en danger des voies légales d'immigration plutôt que de fermer les yeux sur les cadavres qui jonchent le fond de la Méditerranée. Eva Joly, Greens/ALE, 29-04-2015.

De puinhopen van de open grenzen los je niet op door méér Europese Unie. Daarvoor moet je de grenzen sluiten en de-islamiseren! Vicky Maeijer, NI, 12-04-2016.

Aussitôt, l'Allemagne, par son ministre de l'intérieur, a menacé de sanctions financières les récalcitrants. Ce chantage est absolument indécent. C'est maintenant le Président Schulz, président socialiste, qui fait un coup de force antidémocratique et insupportable, avec la complicité du PSE et du PPE, en imposant un vote d'urgence. Marine Le Pen, ENF. 14-09-2015.

Appendix 3: Additional explanation about methods

Explanation about the selection of parliamentary speeches

The Parliamentary debates were retrieved in September 2017. I used the search function from the EP website: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/plenary/en/debates-video.html?action=1&tabActif=tabResult#sidesForm

For the refugee crisis debates I selected all debates that used the words migration and refugees in their title. For the economic crisis debates I selected all the debates that had economic crisis or financial crisis on the title. The selected debates are thus expected to focus significantly on the topics selected. The translation of EP debates is not available since 2012 (European Parliament 2012), and thus, English translations were only available for the economic crisis debates.

Choice of the emotion word markers

The main method used to identify emotions in text is the keyword spotting technique. The keywords usually used to identify emotions are words directly referring to emotions (emotion keywords). However, there is currently no classification referring to ‘all human emotions’ and emotion keywords are difficult to select because there is no accepted academic vocabulary for discussing emotions (Loseke 2009). As basis for the selection of emotion keywords I used Parrots’ classification (2001). He proposes a list of basic emotions (including love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness and fear) and related to these, a list of secondary and tertiary emotions. I added trust to this list since it is a politically relevant word that was not included in Parrot’s classification. As may be expected, most of emotions from Parrot’s classification did not appear in the debates. To avoid an excessively long list, I only displayed in the tables above the emotion keywords that I considered to be the most relevant for the analysis.

Emotion related keywords do not capture all the emotions present in a text and thus, the lexical affinity approach is sometimes used as an extension of the keyboard spotting technique. The main limitations to both methods are the ambiguity in the keywords, the impossibility to detect emotions in sentences without keywords, and the lack of linguistic information. To solve these problems, I read all the texts and considered all the emotion keywords within their semantic and linguistic context. This led to establishing useful distinctions such as for example the distinction between emotions keywords used for purely linguistic purposes (I fear he will not arrive) and emotion keywords actually referring to the emotion itself (fear of the collapse of the EU). The in-depth reading of the texts also allowed taking into account emotional content in sentences without keywords.

Atlas.ti analysis

While the use of Qualitative data analysis softwares (QDAS) such as Altas.ti has become increasingly popular, different scholars use it very differently. QDAS are often assumed to bring qualitative research closer to quantitative analysis. While I used Atlas.ti to contribute to the efficiency, consistency and transparency of my analysis, I am not using it for quantitative purposes. For example, given the low amount of codes used in this qualitative analysis, the concurrences highlighted in the Atlas.ti concurrence analysis should not be considered as established correlations (let alone causations).

Reference for this methodology appendix

• European Parliament (2012) Amendment of Rule 181 on verbatim reports and Rule 182 on audivisual record of proceedings (2012/2080 (REG). Available at: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA-2012-0423+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN

• Loseke, D. R. (2009) Examining Emotion as Discourse: Emotion Codes and Presidential Speeches Justifying War, The Sociological Quaterly, 50:3, pp. 497–524.

• Parrot, W. G. (2001) Emotions in Social Psychology: essential Readings. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.

• Zhao, et al. (2016) Methodological tool or Methodology? Beyond Instrumentality and Efficiency with Qualitative Data Analysis Software, Forum Qualitative Social Research, 17:2, art. 16.