Article published in:
(De)legitimising EUrope in times of crisis
Edited by Franco Zappettini and Samuel Bennett
[Journal of Language and Politics 21:2] 2022
► pp. 208–232

De/legitimising EUrope through the performance of crises

The far-right Alternative for Germany on “climate hysteria” and “corona hysteria”

| University of Leicester
| Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
This article illuminates the far-right populist Alternative for Germany's (AfD) performances of delegitmisation vis-à-vis EUrope and legitmisation of itself/the nation by articulating two paradigmatic, transnational crises: climate change and COVID-19. It asks: ‘how does the far-right AfD perform these two crises to legitimise itself and delegitimize others?’ and ‘what similarities/differences exist between the performance of these two crises in terms of topics, narrative (genres) and their linguistic realisations?’. To explore AfD’s de/legitimisation efforts, written texts and videos by AfD representatives through which they intervene in discourses about climate change in 2019 and COVID-19 in 2020 are analysed. The analysis identifies a two-dimensional process of narrative delegitimization, vilifying national and backgrounding EUropean ‘others’, and illustrates that a comic-romantic emplotment of ethno-national rebirth pre-configures the largely same topics and topoi. In so doing, the article, furthermore, takes another step towards the conceptual integration of narrative (genre) into the Discourse-Historical Approach in Critical Discourse Studies.
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Studies, narrative, far right, radical right, climate change, global warming, nationalism, COVID-19, European Union
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.De/legitimation in and through discourse and narrative
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Entry-level analysis of macro-topics
    • 4.2Narrative-level analysis of genres
    • 4.3In-depth topos analysis
      • 4.3.1Protecting the economy
      • 4.3.2Restoring national sovereignty
      • 4.3.3Lifting the veil of climate change irrationalism
      • 4.3.4Denouncing left-wing excesses
      • 4.3.5Demasking an incompetent elite
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 January 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.21064.for
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