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Abstract
The admission of former communist countries to the EU raised the question regarding their position in this supranational structure. This paper presents the results of a discourse analysis of the press and political and business leaders in the southern Austrian province Carinthia, where public discourse of difference between Others/Slovenians/non-Europeans and Us/Carinthians/Austrians/Europeans has been prevalent for decades. Macropropositional and lexical analysis display three key discourses regarding the admission of Slovenia to the EU: integrational discourse; differential discourse based on the level of Europeanity between Carinthia/Austria as ‘Western European’ and Slovenia as ‘Eastern European’ and thus not a sufficiently ‘European’ member of the EU; and discourse of economic expansionism. The analysis also uncovers the strategies of Carinthian public discourse, which display the occurrence of a new form of exploitation, so-called internal colonialism.
Notes
1. Which individual traits can be selected within a discourse of difference and which consequences this involves for those affected depends on the greatest variety of historical, social, psychological and social–ideological factors. Discourse of difference is the basis for a construct of different forms of collective identities, such as nation, race, ethnic groups, and therefore also the basis for a system of inequality (domination of one social group over others), such as nationalism, racism.
2. ‘Eastern Europe’ is used as a metaphor for former communist countries, although they may not suit this name from a geographical viewpoint, i.e. Slovenia lies south of Austria.
3. Research is limited to Slovenians that live in Slovenia, and does not include the Slovenian minority in Carinthia.
4. Only Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Italy decided they do not need the 7-year transition period and they immediately opened the work force market.
5. In this paper I use the term discourse in two ways: as an abstract noun, I define discourse as language use conceived as social practice, and as a term to describe one or more discourse(s), I define it along the line of Foucault (Citation1972): a limited range of possible statements promoting a limited range of meanings. I do not wish to suggest that discourse is the central feature of hegemonic domination, or that there are no extra-discursive factors, which play a crucial role in the maintenance or change of a specific social formation. But I agree with Hall (Citation1982) who claims that it is, nevertheless, only possible to make sense of the world through the appropriation of language in discourse. Discourse can have the effect of sustaining certain ‘closures’, of establishing certain systems of equivalence between what could be assumed about the world and what could be said to be true.
6. Implicit meaning constructs ‘all propositions of a text that implied or presupposed by information in the text and which are not directly or fully expressed (formulated) in the text’ (van Dijk, 1988b: 64).
7. Causes can be found in the greater skilfulness of journalists regarding the management of written words and greater attention given to political correctness compared to the elite, who had to immediately respond in an interpersonal conversation.
8. Strategy is understood as a ‘type of more or less automatised or conscious, placed on different levels of mental organization, and more or less elaborated plan’ (Wodak et al., Citation1998: 75). Concrete strategy analysis depends on different conditions of the creation of this discursive product. Quality and the meaning of intentional aspect of strategies always depend on concrete research material, i.e. advertisements and newspaper articles contain a greater amount of conscious intention than individual interviews.
9. The author is well aware of some problems that occur in conceptualising the notion of ‘colonialism’. This is an analytical category, but employed here very carefully – Eastern Europe, and Slovenia within, were never officially colonised, but there are some aspects of colonisation that one can adopt and develop further.
10. I am not making an assertion that there is only one discourse present in Carinthia/Austria/EU; however, the plurality of viewpoints is formed in the presupposed frame, which is more or less generally accepted. The process of making a recognisable map continues to use worn out stereotypes and prejudices, which may have lost their edge, but are still persistent. The stereotype of Eastern Europe as the other Europe where people are not sufficiently European continues to exist.