Contesting Europe's Eastern Rim: Cultural Identities in Public Discourse

This is a timely book with a rich array of contributions exploring discursive constructions of identity in a number of countries on Europe's Eastern rim. Thematically focused and integrated, the volume provides much needed perspectives on hitherto underresearched areas and languages. At the same time, the theoretical and methodological issues that it addresses will appeal more generally to scholars studying political and media discourse.

This publication offers a convincing case for the fluidity of national and cultural identities, especially those predicated on 'Europe'. It corroborates the proposition that identities are constructed in relational terms and it offers clear insights on how the 'other' has been dynamically contested, negotiated and reconstructed in public discourses on an enlarged EU, thus highlighting the key role of different linguistic representations in redefining identities. This publication is certainly refreshing as it invites reflections on the construction of 'Europeanness'.

Journal of Language and Politics Vol.12:2 (2013)

Ljiljana Sarić is Professor of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian at the University of Oslo. Her publications include Discourses of Intercultural Identity in Britain, Germany and Eastern Europe (co-editor, 2004), and Red-Letter Days and Discursive Identity Construction in Central Europe and the Balkans (co-editor, forthcoming).

Andreas Musolff is Professor of Intercultural Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia. His books include Metaphor, Nation and the Holocaust (2010) and Metaphor and Political Discourse (2004). He has co-edited Metaphor and Discourse (2009) and several volumes comparing British and German political debates about the European Union.

Stefan Manz is Senior Lecturer and Director of German Studies at Aston University. Publications include Discourses of Intercultural Identity in Britain, Germany and Eastern Europe (2004, co-edited) and Migration and Transfer from Germany to Britain, 1660–1914 (2007, co-edited).

Ingrid Hudabiunigg is Professor Emeritus of German as a foreign language and European studies at the Technical University of Chemnitz (Germany). She has published extensively on discursive identity construction.

Introduction - Ljiljana Šarić, Stefan Manz, Andreas Musolff, and Ingrid Hudabiunigg

Part I

Chapter 1 Expellees, Counterfactualism, and Potatoes. Enlargement and Cross-National Debates in German-Polish Relations - Stefan Manz

Chapter 2 The Role of Metaphor in Shaping Cultural Stereotypes: A Case Study of French Public Discourse on European Union Enlargement - Steffen Buch and Uta Helfrich

Chapter 3 Metaphors in German and Lithuanian Discourse Concerning the Expansion of the European Union - Sandra Petraškaitė-Pabst Part II

Chapter 4 Domestic and Foreign Media Images of the Balkans - Ljiljana Šarić

Chapter 5 Naming Strategies and Neighboring Nations in the Croatian Media - Dubravka Kuna and Branko Kuna

Chapter 6 Mujahiddin in Our Midst: Bosnian Croats after the Wars of Succession - Daphne Winland

Chapter 7 Construction of Serbian and Montenegrin Identities through Layout and Photographs of Leading Politicians in Official Newspapers - Tatjana Radanović Felberg

Chapter 8 Krekism and the Construction of Slovenian National Identity: Newspaper Commentaries on Slovenia's EU Integration - Andreja Vezovnik

Chapter 9 The Linguistic Image of the Balkans in the Polish Press in Discourse on European Union Expansion - Paweł Bąk

Chapter 10 The Eternal Outsider? Scenarios of Turkey's Ambitions to Join the EU in the German Press - Andreas Musolff

Part III

Chapter 11 Contested Identities: Miroslav Krleža's Two Europes vs. the Notion of Europe's Edge - Ingrid Hudabiunigg

Chapter 12 Masculinity and the New Sensibility: Reading a Contemporary Montenegrin Novel - Biljana Jovanović Lauvstad

Chapter 13 The Rhetoric of Present Absence: Representing Jewishness in Post-Totalitarian Poland - Knut Andreas Grimstad Conclusion - Ljiljana Šarić