International leadership re-/constructed?

This article analyses European Union policy discourses on climate change from the point of view of constructions of identity. Articulated in a variety of policy-related genres, the EU rhetoric on climate change is approached as example of the Union’s international discourse, which, contrary to other areas of EU policy-making, relies strongly on discursive frameworks of international and global politics of climate change. As the article shows, the EU’s peculiar international – or even global – leadership in tackling the climate change is constructed in an ambivalent and highly heterogeneous discourse that runs along several vectors. While it on the one hand follows the more recent, inward-looking constructions of Europe known from the EU policy and political discourses of the 1990s and 2000s, it also revives some of the older discursive logics of international competition known from the earlier stages of the European integration. In the analysis, the article draws on the methodological apparatus of the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) in Critical Discourse Studies. Furthering the DHA studies of EU policy and political discourses, the article emphasises the viability of the discourse-historical methodology applied in the combined analysis of EU identity and policy discourses.</jats:p

The Mediatization and the Politicization of the “Refugee Crisis” in Europe

Published online: 28 Feb 201

“We Are a Small Country That Has Done Enormously Lot”: The ‘Refugee Crisis’ and the Hybrid Discourse of Politicizing Immigration in Sweden

This article looks at mainstream political discourses about immigration in Sweden during the recent “refugee crisis”. It argues that different patterns of politicization of immigration have traditionally dominated in Sweden and focuses on Swedish mainstream politics wherein, as is shown, explicit focus on politicization via (previous as well as current) immigration-related policies still persists. However, as the analysis of Sweden's Social Democratic Party's Twitter discourse shows, a hybrid new discourse of politicization is now emerging. It allows political actors to legitimize immigration policy with often populist-like politicization and the use of new modes of online political communication

Evaluation of motivation to quit smoking in outpatients attending smoking cessation clinic

Wstęp: Skuteczność leczenia uzależnienia od nikotyny zależy nie tylko od zastosowanej metody, lecz w dużej mierze również od motywacji pacjenta. Celem autorów pracy była ocena stopnia motywacji oraz określenie najbardziej motywującego czynnika u pacjentów zgłaszających się do poradni antynikotynowej. Materiał i metody: Zbadano 111 osób uzależnionych od nikotyny (50 mężczyzn, 61 kobiet). Średni wiek badanych wyniósł 58 lat. Do oceny wykorzystano: test motywacji według N. Schneider, test uzależnienia Fagerströma i kwestionariusz poradni antynikotynowej. Wyniki: Najczęstszą motywacją do rzucenia palenia była troska o zdrowie (83% badanych). W teście motywacji wynik wyniósł średnio 6,93; średni stopień uzależnienia w teście Fagerströma - 5,49. Gotowość do rzucenia palenia w ciągu miesiąca zadeklarowało 87 badanych (w tym: w ciągu 24 godzin 36%, w ciągu tygodnia kolejne 23%, w ciągu 4 tygodni 28%). Motywacja do porzucenia palenia była podobna u mężczyzn i kobiet. Wnioski: Troska o zdrowie jest najsilniejszym czynnikiem motywującym pacjentów poradni przeciwnikotynowej do rzucenia palenia, zarówno wśród kobiet, jak i mężczyzn. Gotowość do podjęcia próby zaprzestania palenia, oceniana pośrednio deklarowanym czasem, po którym zostanie podjęta próba, nie koreluje ze stopniem motywacji do zaprzestania palenia.Introduction: The success in smoking cessation depends not only on a method of treatment but also on patient motivation. The aim of this study was to estimate the motivation and the main reason to quit smoking among outpatients attending smoking cessation clinic. Material and methods: One hundred and eleven patients (50 men and 61 women), mean age 58, filled in a motivation test, nicotine dependence test and a questionnaire of the clinic. Results: The main motivation to quit was for the health reasons (83%). Mean motivation test result was 6.93; mean nicotine addiction evaluated in dependence test was 5.49. Eighty seven percent of patients were ready to quit smoking during one month (36% in 24 hours; 23% in one week; 28% in four weeks). There was no significant difference beetwen men and women. Conclusions: The main motivation to quit smoking were the health reasons as well among men as women. There was no correlation between the readiness to quit smoking determined as time to quit attempt and the motivation test

"Der Balkan" in der Krone: Austria between "frontier Orientalism" and amnesiac nationalism

This article traces the “silent inscription” of (former) colonial relations in the European integration project to their re-inflection in an EU-sceptical medium. To do so, this contribution draws on a corpus of data comprising news-coverage, commentaries and readers’ letters published in Austria’s largest newspaper, the Kronen Zeitung, whose reach, influence and leanings are well-known. The analysis considers the Krone’s representations of, and discursive references to, “the Balkans” during the crises-littered period between 2009 and 2017. For analytical purposes this discussion focuses on a sub-sample of invocations of “the Balkans” in the Krone, which have appeared with growing frequency since 2015. Conceptually, the discourse-analytical notion of the topos, or argumentative structure, and anthropological literature on “identity grammars” inform the analysis. The discussion reveals continuities with Austria’s historically long-established representational regimes of South-Eastern Europe, and novel discursive features. A contemporary paternalism is shown to re-appropriate the nineteenth-century topos of Austria’s alleged “civilizing mission” and what André Gingrich (2005) has described as Central Europe’s “frontier Orientalism”. Further, preoccupations with “the Balkan-route” and its closure articulate a topos of external threats tied to recent migration flows. The article reflects on an “amnesiac nationalism”, and its post-imperial entanglements, that are currently re-shaping the European Union

Values, imaginaries and templates of journalistic practice: a Critical Discourse Analysis

This article shows that templates are not only crucial for the ways in which journalists construct or structure the media discourse but also for how they perceive themselves and others in the process of journalistic practice. A Critical Discourse Analysis of interviews with Polish journalists on their practices related to reporting migration – a topic largely discarded and ignored by the Polish media – shows that the construction of practice in the journalistic field constantly negotiates the contradiction between “knowing-it-all”, a key element of the template of journalistic habitus/identity, and the frequent lack of experience or limited knowledge of practice and of journalistic work. The analysis reveals that, while often using a discursive strategy of pre-legitimation, journalists enact templates that blur the boundaries between discourses about experiences of journalistic work and imaginaries or scenarios of actions they would only potentially undertake. Journalistic discourses of practice thereby become increasingly displaced, that is, they run along similar templates of discourse of/about quasi-universalised ethics and values of journalism almost irrespective of media organisations of the informants. By the same token, it is emphasised that, rather than being limited by the ideologies and powers of media organisations, agency seems to be often self-constrained by journalists in their self-entrapment in values, templates and imaginaries of journalism