Suchergebnisse

In her book European identity and the representation of Islam in the mainstream press: Argumentation and media discourse, Salomi Boukala offers us a thoroughly interdisciplinary and extremely timely scrutiny of print media communication in times of profound crises in Europe. Boukala interweaves Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Argumentation theory, employing also notions and principles coming from the fields of Political Sciences, Anthropology, (Cultural) Political Economy. In particular, the author examines how "specific [European] newspapers with opposite ideological background […] construct the European supranational identity via references to the EU and the representation of Islam as a common, European 'Other'" (p. 7).

The chapter reviews the extent to which contemporary Greek scholarship in humanities and social sciences makes use of rhetorical categories as relevant descriptive and analytical tools. It proposes revisiting two classical rhetorical concepts, namely topoi and endoxa, in order to illustrate their descriptive and explanatory potential for the analysis of political discourse characterized by adversariness, polyphony, and the need to create communion. To illustrate this theoretical and methodological proposal, two fragments of parliamentary discourse are analysed by combining the insights of Pragma-Dialectics and the Argumentum Model of Topics. The fragments are from the speeches that the government and opposition leaders held during the parliamentary debate on the signing of the first memorandum of understanding between Greece and the 'troika' of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund in May 2010.

Abstract
Since 2015, the mobilization of refugee and migrant populations towards the European Union has at times monopolised public debate, and the so-called 'refugee crisis' has put fundamental European values, such as solidarity, to the test. In this article, the authors focus on Greece with the aim of examining the extent to which manifestations of discriminatory discourses crop up in the discussion of the 'refugee crisis' in two mainstream news portals (i.e., Próto Théma and Efimerída ton Syntaktón) with different ideological orientations (i.e., center-right vs. center-left, respectively). In doing so, the authors specifically focus on the framing of the EU and its institutions as main actors in the management of the situation, showcasing how the discursive emergence of discriminatory attitudes in the context of the mainstream media discussing EU policy forms a solid argumentative basis on which European solidarity is continuously challenged.

Abstract
The article examines two key-speeches given by Greek PMs, at crucial junctures of the Greek crisis, both aiming to
legitimize austerity programs to the Greek population. The speeches by Papandreou (Socialists) and Tsipras (Radical Left)
represent critical moments of the crisis as the two PMs prepared to annul their pre-election promises for a cessation of
austerity. Within a CDS framework, we combine Systemic-Functional and Cognitive-Linguistic perspectives to demonstrate that both
speeches, contrary to depoliticized/technocratic (neoliberal) discourse, converge on the construction of a discourse that
privileges 'the people/nation' while, contrary to left-populist discourse, obscure any references to 'the-establishment'. We,
thus, offer evidence of how left-wing discourses (of both established socialists and radical left) publicly (pro-)claim the
reconfiguration of social-democracy while, in fact, capitulating to market demands for neoliberal austerity policies. Findings
corroborate the view that real social-democracy has been neutered at the European level.

While these lines were written, Taliban were conquering Afghanistan, establishing a regime of terror in the country, while concurrently provoking a wide conflict in the Western public sphere about responsibilities and consequences of this situation. More specifically, Europe witnesses a racist and xenophobic wave of discourses against a new possible escape of refugees toward Europe; presently such discourses abound in politics and the media. It is more than a truism nowadays that, in crisis-stricken Europe, there is an increasing politicization of migration, which takes place against the background and mutual overlapping of diverse crises. More specifically, migration has become a focal and quite polarizing issue in the European public sphere especially since the numbers of refugees, escaping from conflict territories of the Middle East (e. g., Syria), crossing the Mediterranean, dramatically increased starting in 2014 (Bevelander & Wodak, 2019a). The so-called "refugee crisis," as this movement was portrayed by mainstream media and powerful political figures in Europe (Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou, & Wodak, 2018), contributed to social and economic tensions (such as the Eurozone "debt crisis") that took place in the European Union and played into Brexit that followed.

AbstractThis paper examines the reasoning lines in PM Alexis Tsipras' political discourse in critical moments of SYRIZA's tenure as the ruling party in Greece. Adopting a CDS perspective, we zoom in on the patterns that underlie the (de)legitimization of the crisis-ridden EU in three seminal speeches by PM Tsipras during the Greek/EU financial crisis. To this end, we integrate systemic-functional and cognitive linguistic tools with a view to scrutinizing representational meaning, before turning to employ the notions ofendoxonandtopos/locusas a means of studying the particularargumentative inferences, triggered by the respective discursive representations. Through this lens, we show how the overall argumentation can be seen as supporting the (de-)legitimation of dominant EU austerity perspectives while transforming SYRIZA into a pro-austerity voice.