Chapter published in:
Degrees of European Belonging: The fuzzy areas between us and them
Élisabeth Le
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 91] 2021
► pp. 37–62

Chapter 3
“Europe” in Le Monde’s headline discourse

Article outline
  • 3.1Methodology
    • 3.1.1Corpus
    • 3.1.2A three-pronged approach
    • 3.1.3Systemic functional grammar
  • 3.2Headline analysis
    • 3.2.1First step: Polysemic use of “Europe” / “Européens” in Le Monde’s headlines
      • 3.2.1.1Functions of “Europe”
        • “Europe” as part of a designation (in LM: 1.99%; in LM.fr: 3.67%)
        • “Europe” as an entity (in LM: 31.07%; in LM.fr: 27.75%)
        • “Europe” as a participant : Agent (in LM: 22.8%; in LM.fr: 18.29%)
        • “Europe” as a participant : Patient (in LM: 15.13%; in LM.fr: 14.28%)
        • “Europe” as a participant : Beneficiary (in LM: 3.98%; in LM.fr: 4.89%)
        • “Europe” as a circumstantial other than place (in LM: 3.98%; in LM.fr: 4.89%)
        • “Europe” as a place circumstantial (in LM: 21.11%; in LM.fr: 26.12%)
      • 3.2.1.2“Europeans”: Inhabitants of which Europe?
    • 3.2.2Second step: Foregrounding of the European Union
    • 3.2.3Third step: The various degrees of visibility of individual States
    • 3.2.4Synthesis: Three categories of “Other Europeans”
  • 3.3Towards a framework for the representation of a group
    • 3.3.1Greimas’ semiotic square of Us and Them
    • 3.3.2Media representations of Us and Them
    • 3.3.3The presence of “Others,” different from Us and Them stricto sensu
    • 3.3.4Tentative framework for the representation of “Europe”
  • 3.4Conclusion