The making of European identity: the EC President’s 2011 address to the European Parliament

Abstract

This study draws on a constructivist approach to identity as built through discourse. It seeks to examine the production of European identity by discourse. Its aim is to analyze the European (collective) identity as a discursively constructed concept that emerges in linguistic interaction. To this end, this analysis explores the categories used in linguistic interaction to define and understand the sense of belonging to a European identity. To show how European identity is made by discourse, the EC President’s address to the European Parliament delivered on September 2011 is analyzed. The method used is membership categorization devices analysis, a useful analytical tool stemming from Harvey Sacks’s original work on conversation.