Part of
Occupy: The spatial dynamics of discourse in global protest movementsEdited by Luisa Martín Rojo
[Benjamins Current Topics 83] 2016
► pp. 99–126
Edited by Luisa Martín Rojo
[Benjamins Current Topics 83] 2016
► pp. 99–126
Identity as space
Localism in the Greek protests of Syntagma Square
The chapter studies the textual, discursive and social practices of the Greek “aganaktismeni” (indignados) movements, which mainly took place in the public gathering of tens of thousands of Greeks in Syntagma Square, outside the Greek parliament from May to August 2011. Data come from multiple sources, including the General Assembly proceedings and resolutions, while a linguistically-informed approach is followed, which combines Critical Discourse Analysis concepts with corpus linguistic methods. It is argued that the Syntagma protests generated a new context in Greek politics, by introducing new genres and the innovative articulation of already existing discourses. It was also found that social/political identities and social/public space were co-articulated, since the identity of the movement was crucially constructed in terms of space.
References (46)
Baker, Paul, and Tony McEnery
2005 “A Corpus-based Approach to Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in UN and Newspaper Texts.” Language and Politics 4 (2): 197–226. 
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid Khosravinik, Michal Krzyzanowski, Tony McEnery, and Ruth Wodak
2008 “A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Aeekers in the UK press.” Discourse and Society 19 (3): 273–306.
Ben-Rafael, Eliezer, Elena Shohamy, Muhammad Hasan Amara, and Nira Trumper-Hecht
2006 “Linguistic Landscape as Symbolic Construction of the Public Space: The Case of Israel.” In Linguistic Landscape. A New Approach to Multilingualism, ed. by Durk Görter, 7–30. Clevendon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Bondi, Marina
2010 “Perspectives on Keywords and Keyness. An Introduction.” In Keyness in Texts, ed. by Marina Bondi, and Mike Scott, 1–18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bourdieu, Pierre
1991 Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. (Translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson).
Bresta, Marina
2011 “All Greece is a Square (?).” In Democracy Under Construction: From the Streets to the Squares. Experiences, Analyses, Documents, ed. by Christos Giovanopoulos, and Dimitris Mitropoulos, 91–100. Athens: A/sinechia.
Castells, Manuel
1983 The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. London, UK: Edward Arnold.
Chilton, Paul
2004 Analysing Political Discourse. Theory and Practice. London, UK: Routledge.
Chilton, Paul, and Christina Schäffner
2002 “Themes and Principals in the Analysis of Political Discourse.” In Politics as Text and Talk: Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse, ed. by Paul Chilton, and Christina Schäffner, 1–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Coulmas, Florian
2009 “Linguistic Landscaping and the Seed of the Public Sphere.” In Linguistic Landscape. Expanding the Scenery, ed. by Elana Shohamy, and Durk Görter, 13–24. London: Routledge.
De Fina, Anna
2006 “Group Identity, Narrative and Self-representations”. In Discourse and Identity Studies, ed. by Anna De Fina, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael Bamberg, 351–375. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari
1988 A Thousand Plateaus. London, UK: The Athlone Press. (Translated by Brian Massumi).
1994 What is Philosophy. London, UK: Verso. (Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchill).
Douzinas, Costas
2011 “The Crowd in the Square and at the Centre of Political Events.” In Democracy under Construction: From the Streets to the Squares. Experiences, Analyses, Documents, ed. by Christos Giovanopoulos, and Dimitris Mitropoulos, 135–142. Athens: A/sinechia.
Duncan, Nancy
1996 “Renegotiating Gender and Sexuality in Public and Private Spaces.” In Bodyspace: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality, ed. by Nancy Duncan, 127–145. London, UK: Routledge.
Fairclough, Norman
1992 Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
1995 Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London, UK: Longman.
Fairclough, Norman, and Ruth Wodak
1997 “Critical Discourse Analysis”. In Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. Vol. 2, ed. by Teun van Dijk, 258–284. London, UK: Sage.
Giovanopoulos, Christos
2011a “The Squares as a Living Organism: The Re-socialization of the Market.” In Democracy under Construction: From the Streets to the Squares. Experiences, Analyses, Documents, ed. by Christos Giovanopoulos, and Dimitris Mitropoulos, 41–60. Athens: A/sinechia.
2011b “Indignant with the Media or Revolt in the Media? Between the Digital and the Real “Market”!” In Democracy under Construction: From the Streets to the Squares. Experiences, Analyses, Documents, ed. by Christos Giovanopoulos, and Dimitris Mitropoulos, 227–267. Athens: A/sinechia.
Giovanopoulos, Christos, and Dimitris Mitropoulos
2011 Democracy under Construction: From the Streets to the Squares. Experiences, Analyses, Documents. Athens: A/sinechia.
Goutsos, Dionysis
2007 “Basic Local Adverbs in Electronic Corpora. Some Preliminary Remarks.” In Studies Dedicated to Dimitra Theofanopoulou-Kontou, ed. by the Department of Linguistics, 36–46. Athens: Kardamitsa. [In Greek].
2010 “The Corpus of Greek Texts: A Reference Corpus for Modern Greek.” Corpora 5 (1): 29–44.
Hart, Christopher
2010 Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Science. New Perspectives on Immigration Discourse. Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Jones, Rodney H
2008 “Technology, Democracy and Participation in the Public Space.” In Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere, ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Veronika Koller, 429–446. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Joseph, John E
2004 Language and Identity. National, Ethnic, Religious. Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Lefebvre, Henri
1991 The Production of Space. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. (Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith).
Mautner, Gerlinde
2007 “Mining Large Corpora for Social Information. The Case of Elderly.” Language in Society 36 (1): 51–72.
Martín Rojo, Luisa
2001 “New Developments in Discourse Analysis: Discourse as Social Practice”. Folia Linguistica 35 (1–2): 41–78.
O’ Halloran, Kieran
2009 “Inferencing and Cultural Reproduction: A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis.” Text & Talk 29 (1): 21–51.
Parr, Andrew
(ed) 2005 The Deleuze Dictionary. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
Polymeneas, George
2012 “ ‘Greek December’ in Political and Media Discourse: Analysing the PM’s Addresses and Newspaper Reports.” In Current Trends in Greek Linguistics, ed. by Georgia Fragaki, Thanasis Georgakopoulos, and Charalambos Themistocleous, 197–219. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Scott, Mike
1997 “PC Analysis of Key Words – and Key Key Words.” System 25 (1): 1–13.
2008 WordSmith Tools. Version 5. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.
Sotiris, Panagiotis
Springer, Simon
2011a “Public Space as Emancipation: Meditations on Anarchism, Radical Democracy, Neoliberalism and Violence.” Antipode 43 (2): 525–562.
2011b “Violence Sits in Places? Cultural Practice, Neoliberal Rationalism, and Virulent Imaginative Geograhies.” Political Geography 30: 90–98.
Tsitsanoudi-Mallidi, Nicoletta
2012 “ ‘Slogans of Indignados’. Linguistic Uses and Ideological Context.” Nea Paideia 143: 47–64 [In Greek].
van Dijk, Teun A
2000 Ideology and Discourse. A Multidisciplinary Introduction. English version of an internet course for the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). [Accessed September 28, 2012]. Available at: [URL]
2003 “The Discourse-Knowledge Interface”. In Critical Discourse Analysis. Theory and Interdisciplinarity, ed. by Gilbert Weiss, and Ruth Wodak, 85–109. Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan.
2006 “Discourse, Context and Cognition.” Discourse Studies, 8 (1): 159–177.
2009 “Critical Discourse Studies: A Sociocognitive Approach.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Michael Meyer, 62–86. London, UK: Sage.
2009 Society and Discourse. How Social Contexts Influence Text and Talk. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
2010 “Political Identities in Parliamentary Debates”. In European Parliaments Under Scrutiny. Discourse Strategies and Interaction Practices, ed. by Cornelia Ilie, 29–56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2015 “Critical Discourse Analysis.” In Handbook of Discourse Analysis. 2nd Edition, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi Hamilton. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Vradis, Antonis, and Dimitris Dalakoglou
(eds) 2011 Revolt and Crisis in Greece. Between a Present Yet to Go and a Future Yet to Come. Oakland & London: AK Press.