On the Discursive Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Europe

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-VI

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2. EUROPE under Construction: Introduction and Overview

   • Sabine Heinemann, Uta Helfrich, Judith Visser

   Pages 7-25

3. Founding Concepts: Metaphor and Metonymy in the (French) ECSC Treaty

   • Marina Bletsas

   Pages 27-45

4. The Conceptualisation of EUROPE in the Italian Press since the Early 20th Century

   • Sabine Heinemann

   Pages 47-70

5. Notre Europe a besoin d’une refondation – Macron’s Strategies of Political Re-Framing

   • Uta Helfrich

   Pages 71-100

6. From Brexit to Frentrance? The Brexit Discourse as an Arena for Language Battles

   • Sara Matrisciano

   Pages 101-128

7. Pro-European and Anti-European Attitudes: Linguistic Analyses of the Discourse on Europe Based on German and French Newspapers

   • Elmar Schafroth

   Pages 129-150

8. The Fairy Tale Mental Model in Speeches by the Austrian FPÖ and the Italian Lega Right-Wing Populist Parties in the European Parliament: A Contrastive Linguistic Analysis

   • Silvia Sommella

   Pages 151-178

9. Podemos, VOX and Ciudadanos – Spanish European Election Campaigns in Times of Crisis

   • Judith Visser

   Pages 179-204

10. Linguistic Approaches to Discourse: A Multi-Layered Methodology Illustrated by the Example of the Discursive Construction and Deconstruction of EUROPE after the 2015 Paris Terror Attacks

    • Verena Weiland

    Pages 205-231

11. RENEWAL vs REBUILDING: Concepts of EUROPE and how Twitter can Shape our Ideas about it

    • Johanna Wolf

    Pages 233-269

​Europe is the name for a scintillating variety of historically emerged concepts, constantly developed and discussed over time. Its complexity and fuzziness is reflected in a multitude of myths, topoi, symbols and boundaries, which all constitute shared knowledge of the concept of EUROPE and which continue to influence attempts to (de- and re-)construct European identity. The case studies collected in this volume investigate the competing concepts of Europe in political and public discourses from a wide range of perspectives (e.g. frame semantics, discourse linguistics, multimodal analysis), focusing on the following aspects: How is EUROPE conceptualised, (re-)negotiated and legitimised by different political actors, political bodies and institutions? How does “the European idea” change throughout history and how is the re-emerging idea of nationality evaluated?

• European identity
• European idea
• political discourse
• nationality
• folk linguistics

• Institut für Romanistik, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Graz, Austria

  Sabine Heinemann

• Seminar für Romanische Philologie, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

  Uta Helfrich

• Romanisches Seminar, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

  Judith Visser

Sabine Heinemann is full professor of Romance Linguistics at Karl Franzens University, Graz, Austria. Her research interests focus on language change, (historical) dialectology and minority languages (especially Friulian), cognitive semantics and, recently, the language of advertising and political discourse.


Uta Helfrich is full professor of Romance Linguistics at Göttingen University, Germany. Her major research interests include language variation and change, the semantics, syntax and pragmatics of discourse in general, and political and media discourse in particular.


Judith Visser is full professor of Romance Philology (linguistics, didactics and methodology of language teaching) at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. Her main research areas are sociolinguistics, folk linguistics, metaphors and political discourse.

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