Discourses in European Union organizations: Aspects of access, participation, and exclusion

Ruth Wodak

doi:10.1515/TEXT.2007.030

Article

Discourses in European Union organizations: Aspects of access, participation, and exclusion

Ruth Wodak
Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University. Besides various other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for Elite Researchers in 1996. Her research interests focus on discourse analysis, gender studies, language and/in politics, prejudice and discrimination, and on ethnographic methods of linguistic field work. She is member of the editorial board of a range of linguistic journals and co-editor of the journals Discourse and Society, Critical Discourse Studies, and Language and Politics. She has held visiting professorships in Uppsala University, Stanford University, University of Minnesota, University of East Anglia, and Georgetown University. See http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/wodak/index.htm for more information on ongoing research projects and recent publications.

Published/Copyright: October 19, 2007

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From the journal Text & Talk Volume 27 Issue 5-6

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to make processes of co-constructing, negotiating, defining, legitimizing, and justifying inclusion/exclusion in European Union (EU) organizations transparent, both on a structural and on a discursive level. Moreover, individual experiences from migrants present everyday exclusionary practices. In this attempt, I use research on EU organizations and on discrimination in eight EU countries (focus-group discussions) as illustrative examples. I propose a ‘discourse-historical’ framework, which relates different discursive and structural forms of inclusion and exclusion to each other. I assume that many contradictions come into play, while discursive shifts in inclusion and exclusion are decided upon. These contradictions imply—inter alia—value conflicts (conflicts between values of tolerance, democracy, etc.), conflicts of ideologies and beliefs, and power conflicts. Another theoretical assumption implies that managing ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ is a question of ‘grading’ and ‘scales’, ranging from explicit legal and economic restrictions to implicit discursive negotiations and processes of decision making. Finally, the paper illustrates the fluidity of membership categorization when defining exclusion and inclusion.

Keywords: recontextualization; argumentation strategy; topos; migrant voices; European Convention; discourse-historical approach

*Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YT, UK

About the author

Ruth Wodak

Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University. Besides various other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for Elite Researchers in 1996. Her research interests focus on discourse analysis, gender studies, language and/in politics, prejudice and discrimination, and on ethnographic methods of linguistic field work. She is member of the editorial board of a range of linguistic journals and co-editor of the journals Discourse and Society, Critical Discourse Studies, and Language and Politics. She has held visiting professorships in Uppsala University, Stanford University, University of Minnesota, University of East Anglia, and Georgetown University. See http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/wodak/index.htm for more information on ongoing research projects and recent publications.

Published Online: 2007-10-19

Published in Print: 2007-10-19

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/TEXT.2007.030

Keywords for this article

recontextualization; argumentation strategy; topos; migrant voices; European Convention; discourse-historical approach