[ecrea] cfp: ‘Imagining the peoples of Europe: political discourses across the political spectrum’

The call for abstracts for the book project ‘Imagining the peoples of 
Europe: political discourses across the political spectrum’ is open 
until August 15^th 2016. Contributions from communication and media 
scholars with an interest in discourse are more than welcome.

More information can be found here: 
http://www.discourseanalysis.net/wiki.php?wiki=Imagining%20the%20People%20in%20the%20New%20Politics::CfP%20-%20Imagining%20the%20Peoples%20of%20Europe_. 
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The landscape of political ideologies in Europe is in a time of rapid 
change. Established political parties and ways of doing politics are 
being challenged by a multitude of new movements and players that claim 
to articulate the will of the people. However, these actors come in many 
shapes. The anti-Islamic and anti-immigration discourses of Pegida 
(Germany) or Geert Wilders (Netherlands) have little in common with the 
populisms of Syriza, Podemos or Nuit Debout. Many critical discourse 
studies have focused on racist or right-wing modes of populism. 
Left-wing articulations of the will of the people have received less 
attention, even though projects such as Podemos actively embrace the 
signifier ‘populism’. All of these movements can be called populist in 
the sense that they claim to translate the will of the people while 
opposing this will antagonistically to the political agenda and will of 
an elite.

Comparative discourse studies of populist projects across the 
ideological spectrum are rare. Left-wing populist projects have received 
less attention and are not always analysed under this header. The 
signifier populism seems to be connoted differently by political actors 
in the South and in the North-East of Europe. Whereas radical left-wing 
actors in the South frequently equate populism and democracy, left-wing 
thinkers in the North of Europe generally take the opposite stance. This 
is reflected in the fact that most critical discourse studies have 
focused on right-wing manifestations of populism. Because of radically 
different connotations of populism, it is unlikely that a consensus 
about the term will be reached. Nevertheless, because of the shared 
formal structure of these ideologies, a comparative perspective is 
warranted.

In the edited volume /Imagining the peoples of Europe/, we will collect 
discourse studies that focus on the way ‘the people’ is labelled, 
addressed, conceptualised, and interpellated in different ideological 
projects across European regions and nation-states. This common focus on 
‘the people’ - e.g. /de mensen/ (Dutch); /das Volk/ or /die Menschen/ 
(German); /el pueblo/ or /la gente/ (Spanish); /les gens/ or /le peuple/ 
(French) allows for a cross-European comparative perspective. Put 
differently, we seek to collect papers focusing on the way notions of 
‘the people’ are articulated with other concepts and identities. For 
instance, what are the characteristics of the people imagined? And how 
are its friends, allies, adversaries and opponents constructed across a 
range of multimodal media formats and discursive tropes? And what does 
this tell us about the dynamics of democratic and/or populist politics?

We welcome contributions from all perspectives in the transdisciplinary 
field of discourse studies, ranging from linguistic pragmatics and 
multimodal discourse analysis, over critical ethnography, critical 
discourse analysis and discourse historical analysis to 
poststructuralist discourse theory, and anything in between or beyond. 
We welcome both qualitative and quantitative research projects. The main 
criterium for selection will be the topical focus of the contribution.

Instructions

Please submit your abstracts here before August 15th, 2016 via the book 
project’s website. See: 
http://www.discourseanalysis.net/wiki.php?wiki=Imagining%20the%20People%20in%20the%20New%20Politics::CfP%20-%20Imagining%20the%20Peoples%20of%20Europe_. 
_

Abstracts should be no longer than 550 words. In order to submit your 
abstracts, you will need to log in with discourseanalysis.net 
<http://discourseanalysis.net>. If you do not have a profile yet, you 
can click the 'sing in' button in the right corner of the screen. Then 
follow the instructions to create an account. Once logged in, you can 
submit your abstract here 
<file://localhost/javascript/wikiIdLink('9631')%3B>.

Please make sure to describe:

- Your research problem and/or the general topic of your paper

- Your discourse analytical and theoretical perspective(s)

- The type of data you will analyse in your paper

- The general methodological, theoretical or societal issues you want to 
address

- The overall argument you would like to make

The selection of abstracts will be made by September,1st 2016 and you 
will receive a letter of acceptance or rejection in the week thereafter. 
Authors of accepted abstracts will then be offered a letter of 
commitment in which they will be asked to declare that they will deliver 
the full text of their paper on January 31st, 2017.

The book will be published with an international publisher and will be 
edited by Jan Zienkowski and Ruth Breeze.

For further information, feel free to contact Jan Zienkowski via 
(jzienkowski /at/ unav.es) <mailto:(jzienkowski /at/ unav.es)>.


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