"We have the character of an island nation":a discourse-historical analysis of David Cameron's "Bloomberg Speech" on the European Union

More than three years have passed since former British Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a much acknowledged and controversial speech on 23rd January 2013, in respect to the British relationship with the European Union. Europe and the European Union (EU) are now, of course, facing different challenges than three years ago. The contrasting national and transnational identities which emerge in the so-called Bloomberg Speech (BS) imply a nationalistic body politics which constructs the United Kingdom and England as separate entities contrasted to "the continent", i.e. Europe. Hence, BS oscillates between two extremes, in its attempt to alternatively observe maximum distance to the EU and some proximity to its economic policies. Moreover, both the topoi of urgency and threat/danger are appealed to – warning the EU that it would suffer under the loss of the United Kingdom; but also warning British voters that Brexit would damage their future and prosperity. This speech can be perceived as the starting point for the referendum on June 23rd, 2016 – which resulted in a tiny majority wanting to leave the EU ('Brexit'). Of course, there is no clear causal connection between BS and Brexit; but many arguments of the "remain and leave campaigns" can be traced to the BS; as well as the huge ambivalence framing Cameron's position towards the EU

"Normalisierung nach rechts":Politischer Diskurs im Spannungsfeld von Neoliberalismus, Populismus und kritischer Öffentlichkeit

In recent years, we can observe a shift towards the right, in politics and the related political discourse. This paper analyses this development for debates on migration in Austria, while drawing on the concept of "normalisation". The basic assumption is illustrated with an example of Austrian debates following the terrorist attacks in Paris, 7.–9.01.2015. In the quantitative and qualitative analysis of a complete sample of 72 newspaper articles in the period of two weeks in January/February 2015, it becomes obvious that the notion of "unwillingness to integrate" ("Integrationsunwilligkeit"), a completely vague notion (a "floating signifier") which remains undefined and was used only by the right-wing populist party FPÖ in the 1990s, has since moved to the middle of the political spectrum and was suddenly employed by the political mainstream in 2014 and 2015. Moreover, the analysis provides some evidence for the merging of two completely unrelated arguments: an argument about how to deal with non-compliance of adolescent migrant school children with an argument about the prevention of radicalisation in society

'The man who hated Britain’:the discursive construction of ‘national unity’ in the Daily Mail

In 2013, the British right-wing tabloid Daily Mail triggered a fierce controversy, focused on antisemitism and patriotism/nationalism. It was sparked by the publication of an article on the British economist Ralph Miliband with the provocative headline ‘The man who hated Britain’. The lead refers to Ed Miliband, then leader of the British Labour Party: ‘Ed Miliband’s pledge to bring back socialism is homage to his Marxist father. So what did Miliband Snr really believe in? The answer should disturb everyone who loves this country’. In this paper, we analyse how Ralph Miliband is discursively constructed as a dangerous ‘Other’ and subsequently politically instrumentalised in a campaign against his son, Ed Miliband. We focus on how a particular concept of national unity is constructed with reference to the stereotype of the ‘disloyal, intellectual, international Jew’. This figure emerges as the ‘Iudeus ex machina’ in the scenario of impending doom in order, we assume, to distract attention from structural issues facing British society and economy. In our analysis we tackle the complex interdependencies of – mostly coded – antisemitic and nationalist rhetoric with the help of an interdisciplinary framework that integrates approaches to antisemitism, nationalism, media studies, and critical discourse studies, and related methodologies

‘Timeless places’:Narratives about flight, exile and belonging

In this paper, I present some results of an interdisciplinary (psychological, historical, discourse-analytical) research project on narratives of persecution, flight and survival. These stories told by the children (and grandchildren) of Austrian victims of Nazi persecution, all of them left-wing political dissidents and some of them also Jewish, relate to World War II and the Holocaust. In their narratives, the interviewees try to come to terms with the experiences of their parents (and grandparents) and bridge the obvious cognitive dissonance of living in Austria and holding a citizenship which was denied to their elders at a traumatic point of their parents' lives. Firstly, I focus on the narratives as they relate to flight and the loss of citizenship and homes. Secondly, I investigate what it meant - from the children's perspective - to later return to and grow up in the country that had excluded their parents. And thirdly, I reflect on what such stories imply for the present and future and what we can learn from them. In the analysis, I integrate quantitative methods (narrative network analysis and corpus linguistics) with qualitative discourse analysis. Although each story and the related context are of course unique, it is nevertheless worth discussing if specific characteristics of the narratives could be generalised to other contexts in order to illustrate the plights of fleeing refugees and their struggles for survival

The “Establishment”, the “Élites”, and the “People”:Who’s who?

In this paper, I discuss the attempt by all right-wing populist parties to create, on the one hand, the ‘real’ and ‘true’ people; and on the other, the ‘élites’ or ‘the establishment’ who are excluded from the true demos. Such divisions, as will be elaborated in detail, have emerged in many societies over centuries and decades. A brief example of the arbitrary construction of opposing groups illustrates the intricacies of such populist reasoning. Furthermore, I pose the question why such divisions resonate so well in many countries? I argue that – apart from a politics of fear ( Wodak 2015 ) – much resentment is evoked which could be viewed as both accompanying as well as a reaction to the disenchantment with politics and the growing inequalities in globalized capitalist societies

Right-wing populist parties endorse what can be recognised as the “arrogance of ignorance

Drawing on her monograph The Politics of Fear (2015), Ruth Wodak presents a critical discourse analysis of populist discourses and politics. She underlines the difference between left-wing and right-wing populism and addresses the problems of islamophobia, antisemitism, and the anger and resentment of the so-called “modernization losers”. She also tackles the specificities of the historical approach of discourse in Critical Discourse Studies while giving some insights into her own intellectual trajectory and social involvement as a discourse analyst

Analyzing interaction in meetings:perspectives from critical discourse studies and the discourse-historical approach

This chapter discusses salient concepts of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) in respect of analyzing organizational communication and discourse with a focus on decision-making. More specifically, this chapter juxtaposes Process Theory with the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) in CDS. The chapter claims that these two approaches complement each other well and that systematic linguistic analysis could contribute to a more macro-oriented process approach. Some key patterns of interaction in meetings and some discursive strategies which are highly influential in decision-making are illustrated while drawing on the range of meeting data from EU organizations from ethnography and fieldwork. Finally, in the conclusion, the salient implications of such an integrated approach are discussed