Transnationalism as an Index to Construct European Identities: an Analysis of ‘Transeuropean’ Discourses

Abstract

Abstract. Transnationalism is a multifaceted phenomenon which has impacted on society and challenged, inter alia, the paradigm of national affiliations. The trasnationalisation of the EU-ropean field has arguably contributed to a political arena where embryonic post-national identities and new forms of belonging are being negotiated, challenged and legitimized. By investigating the discourses of members of a transnational NGO of 'active' citizens, this paper seeks to understand how current European identities are discursively constructed from bottom up in the public sphere. Appropriating CDA this paper offers insights into how discursive strategies and linguistic devices used by the speakers, and predicated on the indexicality of transnational frames, construct Europe and patterns of belonging to it. This paper suggests different conceptual dimensions of transnationalism enacted by members in discourse which are conveniently summarised as: nation-centric, Euro-centric, and cosmopolitan.

Interlanguage interference: Multilevel linguocognitive approach

“…This is how educational discourse appears in the context of intercultural communication. Thus, the present work confirms the conclusions of many researchers who see the transforming role of the processes of intensive intercultural interaction, which are dictated by globalization and changes in the world order (Zappettini, 2017). In recent years, the perspective of bilingual research has changed, research is being carried out in the linguoculturological direction, dedicated to bilingualism (Hernandez, 2017;Bilá & Ivanova, 2020;Yelenevskaya & Protassova, 2021).…”

Russian Mentality And European Identity. The Linguistic Aspect Of The Problem

“…The problem of Russian national character, Russian mentality and, on the other hand, the issue of the content of the concept of "European identity" has been studied in a wide range of literature. Letting alone its most general characteristics, such as an overview of the history of the issue, see, for example: (Zappettini, 2017;Androsova, 2010). The authors focus on the linguistic components of the problems of Russian mentality and European identity, which in a very brief formulation are as follows: 1) speaking about the Russian mentality, it is searching for lexemes that exist in the Humanities as the names of the main, "nuclear" features of the Russian national character, and what are the meanings and connotations of such lexemes; 2) speaking about the European identity, it is searching for phrases with the reference word identity used in the humanitarian scientific discourse in order to characterize the characteristics of European identity, and what are the meanings and connotations such phrases have.…”

Transnationalism as an Index to Construct European Identities: An Analysis of ‘Transeuropean’ Discourses

“…Appealing to the universality and modernity of English, RO1 realised his argument along a temporal axis (signalled by the expressions 'by now' and 'anymore') which allowed him to represent a socio-historical evolution of English language towards the 'deterritorialisation' and the decoupling of specific cultural/identitarian connotations from communicative functions in line with a 'quasi-diglossic' scenario envisaged for European languages by most members (cf. Zappettini and Comanaru, 2014). Furthermore RO1 appealed to a cognitive schema of universality of the English language through the hyperbolic and futuristic imagery of 'aliens' expected to be able to communicate with humans, an effective linguistic device that allowed him to contextualise issues of communication among Europeans in a global, indeed universal context of unbounded interaction.…”