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The Communicative Setting of the Eurovision Song Contest

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Language, Normativity and Europeanisation

Part of the book series: Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse ((PSDS))

Abstract

The ESC looks back on a history of 60 years in which the competition has grown to become a European institution in its own right. This status has also been officially recognised, as in 2016 the ESC received the Charlemagne Medal for its contribution to European unification and identity formation. Originally created by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU ) with the aim to re-unite the war -ridden Europe of the 1950s through a popular music television format, the event is today more popular than ever before and continues to be an important driving force for European integration and identity formation. The TV broadcast of the ESC 2015 had a market share of 39.6 % (in the youngest age group, 15–24 years, even of 44.8 %), with individual countries showing remarkably high viewing rates (85.6 % in Sweden [SWE] , 95.9 % in Iceland [ISL] ). In total, the contest attracted 197 million viewers. Audience segments show a roughly equal distribution across age, occupational and social-class groups (Le Guern 2000). This makes the ESC a powerful device to unite not just people from various cultures but also from diverse social backgrounds in an endeavour to celebrate Europe. Especially since the implementation of public televoting in 1997, the popular culture mediated access to European identity formation of the ESC can be seen to possess a strong bottom-up, affectively anchored element (see e.g. Zaroulia 2013), which contrasts markedly with the top-down approach to Europeanisation embodied by the EU .

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Detailed (non-academic) overviews of ESC history can be found in O’Connor (2005, 2015) and West (2015).

  2. 2.

    See http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=eurovision_song_contest_to_receive_charlemagne_medal (accessed 18 March 2016).

  3. 3.

    In GER , for example, the ESC 2011 was awarded the German Television Prize in the category “Best Entertainment Show”.

  4. 4.

    Source: http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=nearly_200_million_people_watch_eurovision_2015 (accessed 23 September 2015).

  5. 5.

    Televoting was first tested at the ESC 1997 but involved only a handful of countries: AUT , GER , SUI , SWE and the UK .

  6. 6.

    “Germany ” up to 1989 equals former West Germany.

  7. 7.

    BLR is not a member of the Council of Europe; ISR only has observer status. Liechtenstein has never participated in the ESC, but is a member of the Council of Europe. Other Council of Europe members (AND, LUX, MON) have not participated in the ESC for a longer time.

  8. 8.

    This voting scene can be watched here (minutes 1.30–1.50): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGFBzpdkhTk (accessed 23 September 2015). SEM did not send an entry to the ESC 2006 because the Serbian and Montenegrin delegations were not able to agree on a representative. The country withdrew a few weeks before the contest but nevertheless broadcast it and was allowed to vote .

  9. 9.

    The complete top 20 can be found here: http://www.esctoday.com/news/read/5531 (accessed 4 November 2011).

  10. 10.

    Link to the performance in the Georgian preselection 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRXHFMPkcfk (accessed 23 September 2015).

  11. 11.

    This scene can be watched here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeU17jst9No&feature=related (accessed 23 September 2015).

  12. 12.

    For example, of the 43 countries participating in 2011, 18 were not EU members: ALB , ARM , AZE , BLR , BOS , CRO , GEO , ISL , ISR , MAC , MOL , NOR , RUS , SAN , SER , SUI , TUR , UKR .

  13. 13.

    The two versions of the lyrics can be found here: http://www.diggiloo.net/?2005ua11 (Ukrainian version); http://www.diggiloo.net/?2005ua (multilingual version as performed in the ESC) (accessed 23 September 2015).

  14. 14.

    The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians was topicalised in the ESC by the performance ISR 2009 (Noa & Mira Awad— “There must be another way (Einaich)”), which was sung in Hebrew , Arabic and English (see also Belkind 2010).

  15. 15.

    Jordan even announced BEL as the official winner of the ESC the next day and claimed that it had to stop the transmission due to technical difficulties.

  16. 16.

    The Cypriot ESC songs are generally chosen by the Greek broadcasting station on the island, which is a member of the EBU , and they were sung in Greek up to the year 2000. CYP has been experimenting with quite a few languages in the ESC since then, but Turkish was not among them.

  17. 17.

    Link to this voting scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGFBzpdkhTk (see minute 8.20–9.49; accessed 23 September 2015).

  18. 18.

    Yoiking is a “singing style used by the Saami to communicate to the animals of their herding culture, now symbolic of the distinctiveness of Saami culture” (Bohlman 2004b: 362).

  19. 19.

    Women conducted the ESC orchestra only on four occasions: Monique Dominique (SWE 1983), Nurit Hirsh (ISR 1973, ISR 1978) and Anita Kerr (SUI 1985).

  20. 20.

    MAC ’s rank 5 in the 1990s is based on one participation only and therefore negligible. However, there may be a linguistic dimension to this because Macedonian was not used on the ESC stage until 1998, whereas “Serbo-Croatian ” and Slovenian were already heard during the years of YUG ’s participation. In this book, the term “Serbo-Croatian” will be used when referring to the times of YUG or when such a variety is used by a nation other than BOS, CRO, MNT and SER. Post-Yugoslav uses of such varieties by these four countries are labelled Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian, respectively.

  21. 21.

    MAL did not participate in the 1980s.

  22. 22.

    For studies dealing with the question of potential voting biases in the ESC, see, for example, Ginsburgh and Noury (2008) or Spierdijk and Vellekoop (2009).

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  1. Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Germany

    Heiko Motschenbacher

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Motschenbacher, H. (2016). The Communicative Setting of the Eurovision Song Contest. In: Language, Normativity and Europeanisation. Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56301-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56301-9_2

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