Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 21:5 (2022) ► pp.763–784

Populating ‘solidarity’ in political debate

Interrelational strategies of persuasion within the European Parliament in the aftermath of the Brexit

ORCID logo | Tampere University
ORCID logo | University of Macau
The article examines the various ways in which ‘solidarity’ is invoked and signified through narrative and categorial devices in a political debate following the UK’s vote to leave the EU in 2016. Analysing a floor debate in the European Parliament concerning a white paper released by the European Commission on the future of the EU held in March 2017, we investigate how politicians deploy references to ‘solidarity’ in service of different political agendas. Our research highlights the strategic use of ‘core’ values in political debate through the way different speakers appeal to ‘solidarity’ as a self-evident positive value within the EU, but which is then mobilised through different relevant actors and scenarios to argue contrastive political positions. Our analysis demonstrates how narrative positioning and category-bound normative expectations are harnessed to serve the aims of political persuasion by “populating” a shared principle of governance with purposeful sets of identities and interrelations.
Keywords: Brexit, European Parliament, European Union, membership categorisation analysis, narrative positioning, parliamentary debate, solidarity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.EU and ‘solidarity’ in the framework of sociological neoinstitutionalism
  • 3.Data and method of analysis
  • 4.Solidarity as a foundational principle of the polity
  • 5.Solidarity as a transactional value in future policies
  • 6.Solidarity as a variable targeted by responsible politics
  • 7.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 11 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.21023.rau
References (53)
References
Alasuutari, Pertti. 2015. “Tithe Discursive side of new institutionalism.” Cultural Sociology 9(2): 162–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alasuutari, Pertti and Ali Qadir. 2014. ”Epistemic governance.” European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 1(1): 67–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, Mihail M. 1981. “Discourse in the Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination, ed. by Michael Holquist, 259–301. Austin TX: Texas University Press.Google Scholar
Bamberg, Michael. 1997. “Positioning Between Structure and Performance.” Journal of Narrative and Life History 7(1–4), 335–342. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barnett, Michael N. and Martha Finnemore. 1999. “The politics, power, and pathologies of international organizations.” International organization 53 (4): 699–732. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boli, John, and George M. Thomas. 1999. Constructing world culture. Stanford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carta, Caterina, and Ruth Wodak. 2015. “Discourse analysis, policy analysis, and the borders of EU identity.” Journal of Language and Politics 14(1): 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven E. and John Heritage. 2002. The News Interview. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dieckmann, Walther. 1969. Sprache in der Politik. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
Di Napoli, Ester, and Deborah Russo. 2018. “Solidarity in the European Union in Times of Crisis.” In Solidarity as a Public Virtue?, ed. by Veronica Federico and Christian Lahusen, 193–248. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eisenberg, Eric. M. 1984. “Ambiguity as strategy in organizational communication.” Communication monographs, 51(3): 227–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engel, Jakob and Wodak, Ruth. (2013). “Calculated ambivalence and Holocaust denial in Austria”. In Analysing Fascist Discourse, ed by Ruth Wodak and John E. Richarson, 83–106. Routledge.Google Scholar
Finnemore, Martha. 1993. “International organizations as teachers of norms.” International organization 47(4): 565–597. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. “International norm dynamics and political change.” International organization 52(4): 887–917. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, Richard, and William Housley (Eds.) 2015. Advances in Membership Categorisation Analysis. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, Richard, and William Housley, W. (Eds.) 2009. Media, Policy and Interaction. Routledge.Google Scholar
Furness, Mark, Luciana-Alexandra Ghica, Simon Lightfoot, Balázs Szent-Iványi. 2020. “EU development policy: evolving as an instrument of foreign policy and as an expression of solidarity.“ Journal of Contemporary European Research 16(2).
CrossRef DOI logo with hyperlink to permanent DOI
. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Gerhards, Jürgen, Holger Lengfeld, Zsofia S. Ignácz, Florian K. Kley, and Maximiliam Priem. 2021. European Solidarity in Times of Crisis. Routledge.Google Scholar
Grimmel, Andreas. 2019. Solidarity and European Union Politics. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grimmel, Andreas, and Susan My Giang. 2017. Solidarity in the European Union. Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hester, Steven and Peter Eglin (Eds.). 1997. Culture-in-Action. Lanham UPA.Google Scholar
Housley, William, and Richard Fitzgerald. 2007. “Categorization, interaction, policy and debate.” Critical Discourse Studies 4(2): 187–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jayyusi, Lena. 1984. Categorization and the Moral Order. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jones, Erik. 2012. “JCMS Annual Review Lecture: European crisis, European solidarity.” Journal of Common Market Studies, 501: 53–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karttunen, Laura. 2015. The Hypothetical in Literature: Emotion and Emplotment. Doctoral Dissertation (Literary Studies). University of Tampere.
Keel, Sara, and Lorenza Mondada. 2017. “The micro-politics of sequential organization.” Journal of Language and Politics 16 (1): 1–18. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karagiannis, Nathalie. 2007. European solidarity. Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar
Kontochristou, Maria, and Evi Mascha. 2014. “The Euro crisis and the question of solidarity in the European Union.” Rev. Eur. Stud., 61, 50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michael. 2016. “Recontextualisation of neoliberalism and the increasingly conceptual nature of discourse.” Discourse & Society 27(3): 308–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe. 1985. Hegemony and socialist strategy. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Lahusen, Christian and Maria T. Grasso (Eds.). 2018. Solidarity in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laitinen, Arto, and Anne B. Pessi. 2014. “Solidarity: theory and practice.” In Solidarity. Theory and practice, ed. by Arto Laitinen and Anne B. Pessi, 1–29. Lanham: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Leudar, Ivan and Jiri Nekvapil 2004. Media dialogical networks and political argumentation. Journal of Language and Politics, 3 (2), 247–266. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Manners, Ian. 2008. “The Normative Ethics of the European Union.” International affairs, 45–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
March, James G., and Johan P. Olsen. 1998. “The institutional dynamics of international political orders.” International organization, 943–969. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNamara, Kathleen R. 2017. The Politics of Everyday Europe. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nekvapil, Jiri, Petr Kaderka, and Simon Smith (Eds.). (Forthcoming). The changing shape of media dialogical networks.” Discourse, Context and Media.
Powell, Walter W. and Paul DiMaggio. 1991. The New institutionalism in organizational analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rautajoki, Hanna. 2009. “Staging Public Discussion.” In Media, Policy and Interaction, ed. by Richard Fitzgerald and William Housley, 88–109. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
. 2012. “Membership Categorization as a Tool for Moral Casting in TV Discussion.” Discourse Studies, 14 (2): 243–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. In review. “The relational scaffolding of justifications in policy-making: Deploying the multi standard of identifications in EU policy negotiation.”
Sacks, Harvey. 1972. “On the analyzability of stories by children.” In Directions in Sociolinguistics, ed. by John Gumberz and Dell Hymes, 329–345. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
. 1995. Lectures on Conversation: Volumes I & II1, ed. G. Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sangiovanni, Andrea. 2013. “Solidarity in the European Union.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 33 (2): 213–241. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Vivien. 2008. “Discursive Institutionalism.” Annual Review of Political Science 111: 303–326. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan and Wilson, Deidre. 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Steinworth, Ulrich. 2017. “Applying the idea of solidarity to Europe.” In Solidarity in the European Union, ed. by Andreas Grimmel, and Susan My Giang, 9–19. Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trein, Philip. 2020. “Federal dynamics, solidarity, and European Union crisis politics.” Journal of European Public Policy 27 (7): 977–994. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verhaegen, Soetkin. 2018. “What to expect from European identity?” Comparative European Politics 16 (5): 871–904. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wallaschek, Stefan. 2019. “Solidarity in Europe in times of crisis.” Journal of European Integration 41 (2): 257–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Williams, Raymond. 1976. Keywords. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zappettini, Franco, and Michał Krzyżanowski. 2019. “The critical juncture of Brexit in media & political discourses.” Critical Discourse Studies 16 (4): 381–388. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Brusenbauch Meislová, Monika
2024. Discourse of self-legitimation. Journal of Language and Politics DOI logo
Sanjaume-Calvet, Marc, Daniel Cetrà & Núria Franco-Guillén
2024.  Leaving Europe, leaving Spain: comparing secessionism from and within the European Union . West European Politics 47:5 ► pp. 1121 ff. DOI logo
Sigurdardottir, Heba & Hanna Rautajoki
2024. Embodying scenes of moral disorder: Bodily gestures as a site of signification in feminist TikTok activism. Nordic Journal of Media Studies 6:1 ► pp. 11 ff. DOI logo
Rautajoki, Hanna
2023. Actualizing societal membership in imaginary interaction: The “real construction of society” in the opening of current affairs TV discussion. Frontiers in Sociology 8 DOI logo
Rautajoki, Hanna
2024. Relational scaffolding of justifications in policy-making: Deploying the multi standard of identifications in EU policy negotiation. European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 11:2 ► pp. 255 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.