Forchtner and Kolvraa. Narrating a New Europe

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2012 23: 377Discourse SocietyBernhard Forchtner and Christoffer Klvraa

Narrating a 'new Europe': From 'bitter past' to self-righteousness?

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Narrating a new Europe:From bitter pastto self-righteousness?

Bernhard ForchtnerHumboldt-Universitt zu Berlin, Germany

Christoffer KlvraaAarhus University, Denmark

Abstract

The 1990s and 2000s saw a memory and remembrance boom at both the national and supra-/transnational level. Crucially, many of these emerging memory frames were not simply

about a glorious and heroic past, as in, for example, traditional nationalist narratives. Rather,

groups started to narrate their symbolic boundaries in a more inclusive way by admitting past

wrongdoings. In this article, we look at a corpus of so-called speculative speeches by leading

politicians in the European Union and, against the aforementioned historical background,

analyse their representations of Europes past, present and future. By utilising the discourse-

historical approach in critical discourse analysis, narrative theory and elements of Reinhart

Kosellecks conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), we illustrate how, first, a new Europe,

based on admitting failure, is narrated. However, second, we also show that such a self-critical

narration of a bitter past is, paradoxically, transformed into a self-righteous attitude towardsEuropes others.

KeywordsApologetic performances, bitter past, collective memory, conceptual history, corpus linguistics,

critical discourse analysis, discourse-historical approach, European identity, judge-penitence,

narrative theory

Corresponding author:

Bernhard Forchtner, Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin, Philosophische Fakultt III,

Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany.

Email: [email protected]

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378 Discourse & Society 23(4)

Introduction

When Joschka Fischer, on 12 May 2000 and in the wake of the then successful imple-

mentation of the euro, addressed the finality of European integration, a powerful

debate on EUropes self-understanding was initiated. It resulted in the EuropeanConvention (20022003) and was publicly carried further during the crisis over the

Iraq war. However, with the collapse of the debate over a European constitution and

an emerging financial crisis, this European narrative boom has seemingly went bust.

We see this situation as an opportunity to reflect on a particular dimension of this

identity construction and ask: How have high officials in Europe intervened in this

debate during the past decade? These text-producers enjoy the privilege of being

perceived as speaking for Europe and, therefore, their performances have an effect

on policies as well as corresponding to and institutionalising a broader development

in which remembering is replac[ing] progress and revolution as the master meta-phor of history at least in parts of the Western public sphere (Giesen, 2004: 10).

True, European integration was, from the beginning, a project connected to memo-

ries of the past. Already, the Schuman Declaration (1950), which suggested a steel

and coal community comprising France and Germany, was legitimated by an ambi-

tion to make war not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible, and summa-

rised recent European history in the statement that [a] united Europe was not

achieved and we had war. Even so, these articulations portrayed war primarily as a

tragedy which happened toEurope, rather than an atrocity forwhich Europe had to

take responsibility.

However, in recent decades, it is not simply remembering which has become crucial,

but a form of remembrance which accepts responsibility, admits wrongdoing and thus

casts a shadow over in-groups positive self-representation. Thus, authors like Mark

Gibney et al. (2008) speak of an age of apology. Similarly, Jeffrey Olick (2007) refers

to politics of regret, while Bernhard Giesen (2004: 130) claims that public rituals of

confession of guilt are more and more significant for the construction of (trans)national

identities. Focusing on the Holocaust in particular, Jeffrey C Alexander (2002) described

this development in terms of the emergence of a tragic narrative. These authors share

an understanding of contemporary (European) identity as being constructed through

apologetic performances, that is narrations (of Europe) in terms of an emotive and com-mon history of war and conflict: a bitter past (Eder, 2006: 267ff). Such modes of nar-

rating the past stand in sharp contrast to more traditional (nationalist) political myths

(Bottici, 2007), which typically construct a heroic image of the past. In such triumphal-

ist narratives, past violence and suffering are perceived as being nessesary, justified and

even glorious in light of the present and the future. Mythical narratives turn bitter only

when they involve either an implicit or explicit claim that elements of the communal

past are to be regretted and possibly even apologised for. Thereby a more complex story

of what weare emerges, based on admissions of wrongdoing which might enable more

inclusive symbolic boundaries.In what follows, we investigate how Europes common past is narrated and what

kinds of European self-images emerge from this narration. We do so by analysing a

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Forchtner and Klvraa 379

corpus of so-called speculative speeches (Wodak and Weiss, 2004), in which leading

EUropean politicians narrate a Europe for the 21st century, a new Europe (this phrase

occurs regularly in our corpus, e.g. Barroso, 2005; Prodi, 2003a; for another analysis of

how Europe is done, see Wodak, 2009: 1ff).

In the following section, we introduce the genre of speculative speeches and thecorpus we have compiled. Then we briefly outline our method(s) of analysis which

are drawn from the discourse-historical approach (DHA) in critical discourse analy-

sis (CDA), the multi-disciplinary notion of narrative and Reinhart Kosellecks

brand of conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte). Finally, we describe the corpus

linguistic (CL) tools which we utilised in order to render more transparent the pro-

cess of engaging with and downsizing the data. Our analysis then draws these con-

siderations together and proceeds via two steps. First, we analyse how the past is

narrated as being crucial for understanding Europe and its present and future values.

Second, we investigate how speakers subsequently demarcate Europe from the sur-rounding world, and thereby run the risk of turning an apologetic narrative into a

self-righteous European myth. We conclude with reflections on the promises and

pitfalls of narrating a bitter past.

The data: The genre of speculative speeches and the corpus

The genre of speculative speeches was proposed by Ruth Wodak and Gilbert Weiss and

draws on Dominique Moisis notion of a distinct genre of European soul-searching

speeches (Wodak and Weiss, 2004: 225, 235242). These are speeches in which speakersrelate less to the mundane aspects of concrete politics but instead seek to articulate the

essence of the community itself. Speculative speeches typically occur at commemora-

tive events and at celebrations of anniversaries, for example the 60th anniversary of the

end of the Second World War in 2005 and the 50th anniversary of the Rome Treaties in

2007, or in ceremonial settings to do with milestone events in the communitys political

development, such as the enlargement and accession of 10 new EU-member states in

2004 and the ceremonies surrounding the presentation of the Constitutional Treaty in

2003. Such events encourage speeches which not only articulate the core narrative of the

community and its foundational values, but also include a visionary stance, setting outthe future trajectory of the community. According to Gilbert Weiss (2002: 6264), such

speculation serves to unite a specific idea of Europe in terms of identity, history or

culture with a specific vision of how to organise Europe, which is more manifestly

politically and future oriented.

The analysed corpus comprises 62 texts (136,735 words) predominantly speeches

by European Commissioners and European heads of state, all delivered between

2001 and 2007. Given that this period encompassed a string of occasions inviting the

production of texts speculating about the identity of Europe (see above), the initial

selection of these 62 texts was made by identifying speeches given by major political

figures or member-state leaders in connection with or focused on these events. The

texts are publicly available through the EUs website.



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The discourse-historical approach, conceptual history

and downsizing the corpus

The discourse-historical approach, narrativity and the analysis of

conceptual structures

We conduct our analysis within the framework of the discourse-historical approach

(DHA) in critical discourse analysis (CDA) (see Reisigl and Wodak, 2001, 2009). The

core insight we adopt is that constructing the identity of a community who belongs

and who is excluded is achieved through semiotic performances (texts) which are part

of wider discourses. Here, concepts play a crucial role, and thus there is much intersec-

tion between CDA and Reinhardt Kosellecks conceptual history (for his notion of

concept, see Koselleck, 2004: 85; for a discussion of the interfaces between the DHA

and conceptual history, see Krzyanowski, 2010). Some of Kosellecks theoreticalnotions are thus utilised in this article and help us downsize our corpus in a systematic

and transparent way.

For us, the most salient features of the DHA are, first, its focus on texts, that is semi-

otic entities such as audio, spoken, visual and/or written materials, not in terms of

de-contextualised data, but in terms of their situatedness within (a) a text-internal co-

text, (b) intertextual and interdiscursive relations, (c) the situational context and (d) the

sociopolitical/historical context (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 40ff). Second, the DHA

views texts in context, that is discourse, as socially constituted and socially constitutive

as well as context-dependent semiotic practices related to a macro-topic and pluri-

perspective, that is linked to argumentation (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009: 89). Both dis-

courses and texts link to each other in various ways (interdiscursivity/intertextuality)

but also through processes of recontextualisationwhere an element is, first, taken out of

a specific context (de-contextualisation), only to be, second, inserted into another context

(recontextualisation), thereby the element (partly) aquires new meaning.

CDA is interested in the ways in which semiotic means are used to put forward par-

ticular representations of events, people and places, which facilitate closure of more

egalitarian and inclusive intersubjectivity (for DHAs notion of critique, see Forchtner,

2011). More specifically, power is not only signalled by grammatical forms within a

text, but also by a persons control of a social occasion or by access to certain publicspheres, such as the possibility of giving a speculative speech. In addition, power is

salient within processes of creating collective representations via discursively demar-

cating usfrom themthrough discursive strategiesof nomination (how events/objects/

persons are referred to; e.g. via anthroponyms, personal deixis, synechdoches, etc.),

predication (what characteristics are attributed to them; e.g. via evaluative attributions,

metaphors, presuppositions, etc.), perspectivisation (how involvement is expressed;

e.g. via deixis, quotation marks, metaphor, etc.), mitigation/intensification (how utter-

ances are modified; e.g. hyperbole, modal verbs, vague expressions, etc.) and argumen-

tation (via what arguments claims are justified and standpoints legitimated) (Reisigland Wodak, 2001: 4590). Argumentation is thus not perceived as a speech act per se,

but understood as a potential property of all types of speech acts (Reisigl, 2011). In

order to provide a functional analysis of argumentation, we draw on Stephen E Toulmins

(2003) argumentation scheme (Figure 1).



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Given the heuristic function of his scheme here, we restrict ourselves to Toulmins

so-called simple model, consisting of data,warrantand claim, which still helps in the

transparent reconstruction of an arguments structural composition. The claimdescribes

the point of arrival, that is what is at stake and which can be identified by asking What

exactly are you claiming?. The dataon which this claim is based can be identified by

asking On what grounds is your conclusion based?. Finally, warrantsare statements

indicating thegeneral ways of arguingbeing applied in each particular case and implic-

itly relied onas ones whose trustworthinessis well established (Toulmin et al., 1979:

43). They can be identified by asking How do these data justify the claim?. Within the

DHA (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 74ff), the notion of toposhas been applied instead to

designate both formal and content-related conclusion rule[s] that connect[s] the argu-

ment or arguments with the conclusion, the claim. From the perspective of CDA, theseconclusion rules are either sound or fallacious, enabling or preventing the more or less

undistorted exchange of standpoints through particular ways of representing events,

objects or persons (for this normative distinction, see Forchtner and Tominc, 2012).

Our analysis employs Toulmins model in combination with the aforementioned dis-

cursive strategies in order to identify the basic argumentative structures of the speeches,

thereby enabling us to analyse how the immediate claims made by the speakers are

often intervowen with implicit narrations of Europes past, present and future.

With regards to the concept of narrativity, we draw on converging insights from a

variety of disciplines. In linguistics, William Labov (1997) views narrative as a choiceof a specific linguistic technique to report past events, which involves at least one tem-

poral juncture, that is two clauses sequentially arranged and referring to events indicating

a before and an after (Labov, 2006: 37). Narratives therefore are about changes or

developments, in other words events, involving both a choice of events and the choice to

arrange them according to the fundamental schema of beginning (prior state)middle

(event) ending (new state). An event, the philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1984: 65) claims,

only gets its definition from its contribution to the development of the [narratives] plot.

The construction of narratives entails selecting only those events which support the wider

plot, that is those in congruence with the narratives overarching point (see also Van Dijk,1980: 14). This is observable in, for example, traditional nationalist narratives in which

troubling elements of our past are often omitted as they do not correspond to the

national self-image (Wodak and De Cillia, 2007: 343345). The force of narrative

derives from its linear arrangement of (selected) events in a unified plotline, making the

Figure 1.Toulmins (2003: 97) extended scheme.



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succession, the (implicit) causalities and the conclusions of the story appear natural

(Ricoeur, 1992: 142). In sociology, Margaret Somers (1994: 606) has similarly argued

that it is through narrativity that we come to know, understand and make sense of the

social world, and it is through narratives and narrativity that we constitute our social iden-

tities. Ricoeur likewise claims that narratives are central when it comes to constructingcollective identities. His idea of narrative identityentails that [n]arrative constructs the

identity of the character () in constructing that of the story told. It is the identity of the

story [the plot] that makes the identity of the character (Ricoeur, 1992: 147ff). For narra-

tives in which the in-group is the central character, the construction of a collective self-

image is thus done through the narration of a common past. It is therefore crucial to

emphasise that even though narratives proceed forwards in time one event seemingly

leading to the next they are in fact constructed retrospectively. Labov (2006) accounts

for this with his notion of narrative pre-construction, indicating that the composition of a

narrative starts from the end, from the idea of where it is going to go, and only there-after identifies an appropriate beginning and middle which suit this end. Concerning col-

lective identity, this implies that the retrospective composition of a common narrative is

always undertaken in light of the communitys present situation; it is the end of the

narrative (the communitys present and future situation) which determines which kind of

beginning (the communitys foundation) and middle (its history between foundation and

present) will be considered appropriate communal narration of the past. Within CDA, this

idea has been utilised in research on nationalism, indicating that it is through narratives

about the historical foundation of the national community that its present identity is

strengthened and re-affirmed (Heer et al., 2008; Wodak et al., 2009). In the following, wewill likewise argue that the specific narrations of a common European past ultimately

serve to legitimate the contemporary identity constructions and political priorities

of the EU.

In addition to a focus on how group identity and boundaries are produced through

historical narratives, Reinhardt Kosellecks Begriffsgeschichteoffers a conceptual tax-

onomy which identifies three different dimensions temporal, spatial and hierarchical

in the conceptual construction of collective identities. The temporal dimension con-

cerns the fundamental conceptual distinction, before:after. Any rendering of the human

world and any exercise of action must relate itself to the temporality of human existence,that is the tension between a space of experience and a horizon of expectation

(Koselleck, 2004: 257). In any society, choices made regarding the future are always in

some sense informed by the past, but past experiences are also understood in the light of

future goals. Koselleck thus emphasises that a societys conceptual self-description

always involves narrative (re)descriptions of its past and imaginings about its future.

The spatial dimension concerns the distinction, inside:outside. To think about society

is to think of its boundaries. DHA renders this idea in terms of the always present mark-

ing out of self versus other in the construction of a community. Kosellecks most

elaborate analysis of the inside:outside distinction is carried out under the heading of

asymmetrical counter-concepts. Analysing examples, such as the Nazi notion of der

Untermensch(Koselleck, 2004: 155191), explores how transitions from relationships

of recognition to conflict and persecution between communities can be traced in their

conceptual universes. Although relations to the other are not necessarily asymmetrical,



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he insists that any construction of community must, conceptually, be able to differentiate

itself from other communities.

Finally, there is the hierarchical dimension as regards the upper:lower distinction.

This points to hierarchical power relations in society but also designates the metahistori-

cal distinction, essence:surface, in other words the fact that any community will privilegecertain concepts as expressing what is believed to be at the very heart of us. As

Koselleck (2004: 84ff) remarks, the wordwe can articulate a collective identity, but the

feeling of community becomes intelligible and communicable only through its associa-

tion with concepts, for example culture, race or identity. Thus, this distinction points

to the ideational dimension of constructing a community, the necessity of articulating a

sacred core of concepts, symbols and ideas that its members believe signify the essence

of their group.

In the conceptual universe of a given community, these three dimensions are inher-

ently interrelated. However, their separation can serve as a heuristic tool when attemptingto grasp a complex conceptual structure. In our analysis, we focus on these dimensions

in order to investigate how Europe is constructed through their interconnections and,

furthermore, utilise them to downsize our corpus, a procedure to which we now turn.

Downsizing the corpus using corpus-linguistic tools

In this study, we utilise corpus-linguistic (CL) tools to render the process of downsizing

more transparent and enable systematic sampling. Consequently, we have been able to

automatically identify a small number of texts within our larger corpus which have ahigh concentration of certain collocates and might thus be of particular significance. CL,

in general, enables the researcher to deal with large collections of naturally occurring

language (Togini-Bonelli, 2004: 13ff), that is corpora of hundreds of millions of words,

which are analysed with the help of new technologies and the increasing availability of

electronic (re)sources. However, studies have also been conducted on the basis of smaller

corpora. Elena Togini-Bonelli (2004: 12), for example, refers to corpora as small as a

few thousand words. Furthermore, CL, apart from its extensive application in forensic

and pedagogic analysis, has also been increasingly utilised in the context of CDA

research (e.g. Baker et al., 2008). Although applying CL tools in our analysis, we do notclaim to conduct a full corpus analysis. Instead, based on a small but homogenous cor-

pus, our aim in utilising CL tools is, first, to identify key concepts and, second, to avoid

the cherry-picking of data. Thus, we utilise CL tools in order to facilitate the downsizing

process in an automatised, systematic and transparent way so that, having started from

62 texts, we ultimately arrive at five texts (see below), and even identify the most salient

paragraphs which we subsequently analyse qualitatively.

We started by creating an index using WordSmith 5.0, looking for collocates of

Europe. We chose the term Europe rather than, for example, the Unionor EU, for its

greater speculative potential, as speakers are implicitly able to include candidate coun-

tries and to draw on historical narratives concerning a past which preceded the emer-

gence of European integration after 1945. Collocation refers to the systematic

co-occurrence of words in a pre-defined span within a corpus. As language and texts are

not random phenomena, collocations show patterns of co-occurrence, associations and

connotations. Susan Hunston (2002: 68) states that there exists a tendency of words to



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be biased in the way they co-occur, and Costas Gabrielatos and Paul Baker (2008: 10ff)

add that collocation patterns tend to reveal the semantic profile of a word. The initial list

of collocates was restricted by the following settings: span +/5; mutual information

(MI)>3; log-likelihood (LL)>6.63; minimum collocation frequency 5. While the

MI score indicates the strength of the collocation, it favours low-frequency contentwords. In order to balance the latter effect, we also considered LL, which determines the

statistical significance of co-occurrences (see Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008: 11).

Having established our list of collocates, the concordances were independently read

by the two authors and categorised according to Kosellecks three conceptual dimensions

of identity (Table 1). Given that some concepts have very different meanings according

to the context they appear in, for example division/dividewhich can both be temporal

and spatial, the ultimate decision was taken after a discussion of such cases.

In a second step, we looked for clusters around Europe which contained these

collocates (settings: span 25; minimum frequency 3). Clusters are sequences of words

Table 1. Kosellecks three dimensions applied to our corpus of speculative speeches.

Kosellecks three dimensions CL-indicators

Temporal Spatial Hierarchical MI Log-likelihood

IMAGE 6.45 39.75

SOUL 6.38 132.48

EASTERN 6.29 259.04 CENTRAL 6.11 217.04

SOUTHERN 6.04 49.49

FATHERS 5.67 63.85

DIVIDED 5.57 43.46

EVERYONE 5.49 42.53

STANDS 5.49 42.53

DIVISION 5.42 41.65

VISION 5.40 112.66

BUILDING 5.28 114.58

UNITED 5.25 216.61

FOUNDING 5.20 67.08

BUILT 4.93 41.37

FOUNDATIONS 4.93 25.84

UNIFICATION 4.86 25.30

IDEA 4.85 65.66

AGO 4.76 49.12

FIFTY 4.76 29.45

CULTURE 4.68 110.18

WESTERN 4.66 28.52FUTURE 4.64 242.38

CITIZENS 4.61 202.60

PEOPLES 4.58 74.17

CENTURY 4.51 49.88

(Continued)



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BUILD 4.49 49.49

EXPECTATIONS 4.45 22.19

SHAPE 4.39 26.12

MEDITERRANEAN 4.32 38.32

GREAT 4.32 68.15

GENERATION 4.26 20.79

PEOPLE 4.23 136.79

UNITY 4.21 20.48

CULTURAL 4.20 73.54

POLITICS 4.17 20.17 FREE 4.09 23.56

IDENTITY 4.07 27.26

DEMOCRATIC 4.01 53.51

PEACE 3.97 86.80

TODAY 3.94 115.73

HISTORY 3.93 44.52

BORDERS 3.91 33.12

DIVERSITY 3.91 47.74

BECOME 3.90 36.59 PROSPERITY 3.88 32.63

CONSTITUTION 3.86 36.11

GLOBAL 3.85 35.87

PRESENT 3.81 24.75

CAPACITY 3.80 17.57

MODEL 3.80 17.57

EXAMPLE 3.79 24.52

SOLIDARITY 3.76 31.26

EAST 3.73 17.13

RESPONSIBILITY 3.73 17.13 PLACE 3.73 30.83

REGIONS 3.72 23.87

PROJECT 3.69 40.43

ALWAYS 3.67 16.72

ROLE 3.63 36.15

PAST 3.61 26.13

POWER 3.61 26.13

WORLD 3.58 110.00

FREEDOM 3.53 44.28

SUCCESS 3.50 18.66

TOGETHER 3.48 43.39

AFTER 3.48 27.74

Table 1. (Continued)

(Continued)



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DEMOCRACY 3.42 39.09

FUNDAMENTAL 3.38 26.57

OVER 3.37 29.50

VALUES 3.36 52.94

NOW 3.29 45.52

CONTINENT 3.29 22.71

YEARS 3.24 50.06

SINCE 3.21 13.67

NEW 3.16 99.35

STATE 3.11 18.26

STABILITY 3.08 18.00

COMMUNITY 3.08 28.28

INTERNATIONAL 3.07 25.52

CHANGE 3.03 12.50 AREA 3.00 17.26

Table 1. (Continued)

Table 2.Relevant clusters.

TEMPORAL SPATIAL HIERARCHICAL

BUILDING EUROPE CENTRAL AND EASTERNEUROPE

DEMOCRATIC EUROPE

DIVISION OF EUROPE CITIZENS OF EUROPE EUROPE OF PEACE

EUROPE IS NOW EASTERN EUROPE EUROPE STANDS

EUROPE OF THE FUTURE EUROPE AND THEMEDITERRANEAN

IDEA OF EUROPE

EUROPE OF TODAY EUROPE IN THE WORLD SOUL OF EUROPEEUROPE TODAY EUROPES CITIZENS PEACE IN EUROPE

EUROPE WE ARE BUILDING EUROPES PEOPLE

EUROPES FOUNDING PEOPLE OF EUROPE

EUROPES FUTURE PEOPLES OF EUROPE

EUROPES HISTORY SOUTHERN EUROPE

FATHERS OF EUROPE WESTERN EUROPE

FUTURE OF EUROPE UNITED EUROPE

NEW EUROPE

TODAYS EUROPE

UNIFICATION OF EUROPE

VISION OF EUROPE



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with no concern for meaning which are computed automatically by WordSmith. We then

cleaned up these clusters, that is we deleted any surplus such as in , resulting in the following 34 relevant clusters (Table 2).

Finally, working with the pivot table function in Microsoft Excel, we identified texts

which contained at least one cluster from each dimension and at least five differentclusters in total. While it has to be said that this downsizing procedure favours longer

texts, as they have a greater chance of containing collocates and clusters, it did enable

the automatised, that is computer-assisted, rather transparent and systematic compila-

tion of a primary corpus of five speeches (18,493 words in total). This primary corpus

includes three speeches by the then President of the European Commission, Romano

Prodi (2003a, 2003b, 2004), one speech by his successor, Jos Manuel Barroso (2005),

and one speech by Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and

then President of the European Council (2007). We ultimately focused on passages in

which the node word Europeappeared close (+/5 words) to a collocate at whichpoint we started the qualitative analysis.

Analysis: Narrating a new Europe from bitter past to

self-righteousness

We start our analysis by utilising insights from Koselleck and consider how the hierar-

chical dimension of European identity (ideas about the essence of the community) is

combined with its temporal dimension (narratives of the past). We subsequently turn to

how the spatial dimension (differentiation from others) is articulated and how thisimpacts on the wider construction ofEUrope undertaken in these speeches. Our textual

analysis: (a) reconstructs the core argument in the respective passage by utilising

Toulmins simple model; (b) looks at how this central argument is justified via discursive

strategies and linguistic means; and (c) approaches the passage from the perspective of

narrative theory.

Europes values based on a bitter past

In unfolding the identity of Europe today, speakers often start from a prescriptive strategywhich assigns to the community a set of values. Europe is, above all, a community of

values. As Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and then President of

the European Council, proclaimed in 2007, at the official ceremony to celebrate the 50th

anniversary of the signing of the Treaties of Rome: [t]he source of Europes identity are

[sic] our shared, fundamental values. They are what holds [sic] Europe together. Although

some variance in the values highlighted occurs, a stable set of core values includes democ-

racy, freedom, the rule of law, peace and tolerance (see below; see Klvraa, 2012).

However, in order to make these universalvalues specifically European, a narrative

of the particular European historical experience is introduced. This is not a traditional,that is to say triumphant, narrative, characterising Europe as the site of glory and pro-

gress. Rather, what is foregrounded in narrating Europe as a social actor are the tragic,



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violent and bitter dimensions of its history. This is visible in a speech delivered by Prodi

(2004) at a seminar against anti-Semitism.

Europes history has many glorious pages. I think of the democratic principles we have

inherited from Greek civilisation. I think of the flowering of the Renaissance and theadvances of the Age of Enlightenment. But Europes past also has many dark and

terrible chapters. Chapters that relate the worst of mans cruelty to his fellows. It has

seen persecutions and pogroms. It has seen the Inquisition and the Wars of Religion. It

has seen burnings at the stake, autos-da-f, noyades and purges. Most terribly, within

the span of my own generation, it has seen concentration camps, mass extermination,

genocide and the unique horror of the Shoah. Often these have been passed off with

euphemisms such as the Final Solution and the equally obscene ethnic cleansing.

There are killing fields elsewhere too, but this does not reduce the heavy burden of

guilt we Europeans bear for the past. We are not here to judge other nations orcontinents or their crimes. We are here to talk about Europe. Let us have the courage

to face the facts and call things by their true names.

As mentioned above, Toulmins simple model (datawarrantclaim), DHAs discur-

sive strategies and narrative theory will structure our analysis. We will start by introduc-

ing the macro-argument put forward which, in our first example, results in Figure 2:

This argument which illustrates the so-called age of apology well is supported by

applying a variety of discursive strategies. Starting with realisations of the strategy of

nomination, it is crucial to note that Prodi, throughout the speech, constructs the audi-

ence in terms of we, us (lines 1, 12, 13). He thereby addresses a homogenised, all-

inclusive audience which is drawn into his narrative. Furthermore, there is a shift between

establishing the data(particularly lines 19) and the claim (particularly lines 1114), in

that the former speaks of Europe (lines 1, 3) while the latter nominates the in-group as

Europeans (furthermore, lines 1214 heavily employ the aforementioned personal

deixis).

Arguably, Europe might be perceived as a more abstract entity, and to speak of

Europeans right at the beginning might provoke the listener/reader to ask: Who exactly

was responsible for the worst of mans cruelty to his fellows? This, however, would cre-

ate division where Prodi aims to unify the continent, thus Europeans as active and unified

agents only occur at the end of the passage. With regard to how Europe is characterised, the

dominant strategy of predication is indeed notone of positive self-representation (although

there are references to more traditional positive self-representations). For example, Prodi

Figure 2. Functional analysis of Prodi (2004).



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lists many glorious pages (line 1; strategy of intensification and predication) and seem-

ingly attempts to mitigate the subsequent self-criticism (lines 39) by stating that [t]here

are killing fields elsewhere too (line 11). However, these comments are always followed

by the adversary but, in other words expressing opposition to these very statements. More

importantly, Europe is explicitly characterised via a list of clearly negative images (darkand terrible, mans cruelty to his fellows, etc.; lines 38). The force of this listing is fur-

ther increased through anaphora, that is It has seen (lines 45; another rhetorical operation

is visible in lines 1314 where a clear antithesis ultimately justifies the claim that we have

to have the courage to face the facts). This rather negative predication of Europe is sup-

ported by the metaphorical framing of its history/past in terms of a book: while there are

glorious pages (italics added), terrible aspects fill entire chapters (italics added). By

emphasising the danger of euphemisms (line 9) and rejecting the potential relativism of

pointing to other killing fields, awareness of these shortcomings is further intensified (see

also the many intensifiers such as many, worst, Most; lines 3, 4, 6).The primary emotion evoked in these articulations of Europes (pre-integration)

history is guilt not pride. Its major point is to impart a moral imperative in the form

of facing up to a terrible past, an obligation which it puts on allEuropeans (see the

note on nomination above). This is, however, not a fully unfolded narrative, given that

Prodi only makes the moral demand that the dark past should be acknowledged without

actually narratingEuropes departure from it, that is without marking out a beginning,

a transitional event and an ending.

Elsewhere, Prodi more fully unfolds Europes tragic narrative, including some of its

most central characters: Europes founding fathers. These men play a crucial role whennarrating Europes departure from its pre-integration bitter past, a centrality which

is illustrated by their appearance in 15 out of the 62 texts in our corpus. The following

passage is taken from ProdisEurope: The Dream and the Choices(2003b), and illus-

trates this narrative pattern.

Men and women born after 1945 will be able to say that they have lived all their lives

without seeing their own countries and their own families afflicted by war the first

Europeans in history who have been able to do so. I can remember war, though I was

still very young. And my father before me could remember war, and so could my

grandfather, and all the generations before him. Never again, said the foundingfathers of Europe, and meant it, and so it was.

As illustrated in Figure 3, the basic argument still concerns Europes relationship to

its horrific past, but it now focuses on fundamental change and the deeds of the founding

fathers:

Figure 3. Functional analysis of Prodi (2003b).



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Here again, reference is made to a common dark past, but it is done somewhat cov-

ertly by explicitly referring only to a set of memories of war (line 1ff). Consequently,

Prodi can again avoid differentiating between perpetrators and victims and instead

represent contemporary Europeans through inclusive categories (Men and women,

Europeans; lines 1, 3), as totum pro parte, rather than as members of particularcommunities differently positioned in relation to the perpetrator:victim dichotomy.

The key argument made in this passage is that European history is marked by a

fundamental break. This break is constituted by the historical and moral intervention

made by the founding fathers (line 5). It is this intervention which radically separates

centuries of war from the present time in which Europeans are able to live in peace.

By foregrounding this, two perspectives are introduced which support the above-mentioned

juxtaposition: first, Prodi emphasises the otherness of what preceded this new epoch

by evoking the authority of his own personal experience (I can remember war, line

3). Subsequently, he introduces the perspective of the first Europeans (line 2), whohave not experienced war as being in an entirely different position. The founding

fathers themselves are characterised through the mobilisation of two striking recontex-

tualisations. On the one hand, Never again (line 5) has against the background of

the Holocaust become a rallying cry against contemporary anti-Semitism and evil in

general. On the other, line 56 contains an implicit biblical reference as Prodi aligns

with the basic sentence structure of the story of Genesis (1:3), in which each account

of an act of creation is introduced by the words God said and concluded by and so it

was. These (religious) recontextualisations indicate the sacredness of the founding

fathers, making them the secular saints of the Union.Here we can identify the necessary elements of a narrative structure. The temporal

juncture presented is the transition from a common European state of war and suffering

to one of peace; the event of the narrative is the moral choice and intervention the

Never again of the founding fathers. The narratives plotline concerns the beginnings

of European integration, which fundamentally changed European history due to the

founding fathers moral refusal to repeat Europes violent history. In line with Ricoeurs

arguments, the overarching moral agenda of the narrative significantly colours the

meaning of its central event. In order to function as part of the Never again plotline, the

event of European integration must itself be given a moral connotation. In consequence,speakers tend to separate the economic, instrumental surface of European integration

from its moral value-based essence. This conceptual differentiation constitutes the hier-

archical dimension of European identity in the speeches. Within this framework,

European economic integration is only the means through which the grander moral

agenda of the founding fathers, that is making war in Europe impossible, is advanced.

As Prodi (2003b) claims, behind every economic proposal, behind every fresh venture

on the economic front, there has been a clear and conscious political inspiration and a

sharp choice of values. Such narration, which backgrounds profane economic aspects

in favour of sacred values, is also explicit in the following speech by Merkel (2007):

Let us not forget: For centuries Europe had been an idea, no more than a hope of peace

and understanding. Today we, the citizens of Europe, know that hope has been

fulfilled.



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Figure 4. Functional analysis of Merkel (2007).

It has been fulfilled because the founding fathers of Europe were thinking in terms

well beyond their own generation. They were thinking in terms well beyond their own

time. They were thinking in terms also well beyond purely economic freedoms.

This dream could come true because we citizens of Europe have learned over the past50 years to make the most of our identities and diverse traditions, the lively variety of

our languages, cultures and regions.

This dream could come true because we let ourselves be guided by that quality which

for me gives Europe its true soul, that quality which made the Treaties of Rome

possible.

That quality is tolerance. We have taken centuries to learn this. On the way to

tolerance we had to endure cataclysms. We persecuted and destroyed one another. We

ravaged our homeland. We jeopardized the things we revered. Not even onegeneration has passed since the worst period of hate, devastation and destruction.

Again, we start by representing Merkels position through Toulmins scheme (Figure 4):

Again, references to the bitter past dominate the passage (in particular lines 12,

1720) and, similar to the first example (Prodi, 2004), an all-inclusive in-group (we in

lines 2, 9, 13, 17, 18, 19; also us in line 1 and our in lines 10, 11) is constructed. In line

with this broad strategy of nomination, Merkel speaks of our homeland in relation toEuropean failures (line 19). By using the singular, Merkel presupposes the existence of

one homeland, Europe. Instead of speaking of different national homelands engaged in

violent conflict, which would depict European history more accurately, Merkel repre-

sents Europe, retrospectively, as if it always was one (although at times fractured) home-

land. Following Labovs (2006) idea of narrative pre-construction, the narratives end (a

unified Europe) restructures its beginning by projecting the idea of a common European

homeland retrospectively, thereby implicitly naturalising the narratives conclusion (an

actual unified Europe).

The founding fathers vision for Europe is again given a moral rather than a purelyeconomic meaning (lines 57) and serves as the plot mechanism which facilitates the

transition from a dark past to a peaceful unified present. But whereas European peace

was, in the narration of Prodi quoted above, something of a divine gift from the found-

ing fathers to Europe, Merkel ascribes a much more active role to the citizens of

Europe. The horrors of the past are now not simply ended by the founding fathers, but



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become the basis for a learning process including all Europeans. This collective is repre-

sented as actively shaping its future (lines 2, 9) and having collectively learned from its

violent history (lines 9, 17).

The related claim that Europe has learned through the integration process of the

last 50 years to make the most of its diversity (lines 911) constitutes another intertex-tual reference: this time to the EUs official motto Unity in Diversity. Integration,

therefore, crowns a potential which has always existed (line 1) but which has only now

been realised by Europe (re)discovering its true soul: the quality or value of tolerance

(line 17). Here, Merkels use of personal deixis (we) does not simply draw her audience

into the plotline, but constitutes afallacy of hasty generalisation. After all, the claim that

we citizens of Europe have learned (line 9, also line 17) could be appropriate but con-

stitutes an unjustified generalisation given, for example, the electoral successes of

far-right groups all across Europe.

Merkels narration positions the community as the subject of the narrative, rather thanas the object saved by the founding fathers (who then become the central narrative sub-

ject, as in Prodi above). The effect is that the identity-generating dynamics of the narra-

tive now centre on the collective identity of Europe, rather than having metonymically

to articulate this through the characters of the founding fathers. The construction of a

collective European identity is therefore much more forceful; Europeans are now directly

ascribed the ability to learn collectively and are, thereby, imputed with a common

soul (represented by the value of tolerance) much deeper than any instrumental

commonality of economic interests.

The connection between the hierarchical dimension (the soul or values of Europe)and the temporal dimension (the narrative of the bitter past) is at the core of this con-

struction of European identity. As narrated here, the relationship between Europes

identity as a community of values and its history is never one which entails a simple

claim to be the origin or longstanding promoter and protector of these values (arguably,

this differs from the US narrative which is largely about the same values). Rather,

Europes claim to a privileged relationship with these universal values rests on the idea

of a communal learning process which has supposedly taken place in Europe. As Prodi

bluntly states in another speech (2003a): [w]e have learnt to our cost the madness of

war, of racism and the rejection of the other and diversity. Peace, rejection of abuse ofpower, conflict and war are the underlying and unifying values of the European pro-

ject. The implicit causality between the two sentences underpins the central point of

this European narrative: Europes learning process rests on having experienced the radi-

cal absenceof exactly those (universal) values which it now defends and holds sacred.

It is becauseEurope is guilty of so many wars that it has come to appreciate peace. It is

becauseEurope has seen the worst of authoritarian rule that it safeguards democracy. It

is becauseEuropeans persecuted each other for so long in the name of religious, national

or racial differences that it has now learned to deal with diversity in a tolerant and inclu-

sive way. The moral imperative which emerges from this plotline is that Europeans

must continue to take on the guilt of their past, must insist on remembering its horrors

and must therefore look at their history not with pride or nostalgia but with a

determination to make Europe radically different from what it was before.

In a similar vein, it has been argued by scholars such as Zygmunt Bauman (2004) and

Tzvetan Todorov (2005) that Europes identity is not (primarily) defined by its economic

functions, or indeed by the construction of dichotomous self:other relationships with the



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external world. Rather, contemporary Europe defines itself against its own past as other.

It is this departure and differentiation from Europes bad self which serves as the pri-

mary contrast when articulating its present value-based identity. We claim, however, that

the presence of a bitter past as a primary other does not necessarily mean that the

external world plays no role in European identity constructions. In fact, the contempo-rary external world isarticulated in relation to Europe as a community of values born of

a bitter past. Therefore, the spatial dimension of European identity (differentiation

from the non-European other) cannot be ignored. Rather, this spatial dimension has a

potentially profound impact on the tragic narrative itself and the kind of European

identity that it produces.

Europe and others

If the identity of the community is dominated by the relationship to a bitter past, onemight expect its relation to other communities to be negatively asymmetrical, that is to

posit Europe as inferior. After all, guilt does not seem to provide a platform for claiming

any kind of superiority. As Prodi made clear (We are not here to judge other nations or

continents or their crimes), it would be illegitimate to mitigate ones own crimes by call-

ing attention to the crimes of others. However, from the tentative claim that Europe has

learned from its bitter past, it is a seductively short step to the adjacent claim that one

is therefore able to teach others. Merkel (2007), for example, apparently sees no contra-

diction between Europes dark history and an emerging ambition to make a distinctly

European contribution to the running of the world beyond Europe.

For after all the wars and boundless suffering, something very special has emerged.

We, the citizens of Europe, have united for the better. For we know, Europe is our

common future. That was a dream for many generations. Our history reminds us that

we must protect this for the good of future generations.

And so I hope that the citizens of Europe will say in 50 years time: Back then in

Berlin, the united Europe set the right course. Back then in Berlin, the European Union

embarked upon the right path towards a bright future. It went on to renew its

foundations so that it could make its contribution here in Europe, this old continent, aswell as globally, in this one large yet small world we live in.

For a better world. For people everywhere. That is our mission for the future.

A reconstruction of the argument made above, along the lines of datawarrantclaim,

reveals similarities as well as differences between a story which mainly narrates a bitter

past and one which runs the risk of becoming self-righteous (Figure 5):

Figure 5. Functional analysis of Merkel (2007).



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Such an argument, which is again linked to a hasty generalisation(we, lines 2, 4;

see also the construction of a common future in line 3ff) instead of acknowledging

other speakers, such as Eurosceptic or racist voices, emphasises the success of the

European project to overcome the past, rather than mentioning wrongdoings which call

for reflection among contemporary Europeans. The special experience which a tragichistory has imparted (Europe is explicitly characterised as special (line 1) and this is

further intensified through the use of very) is no longer only valid with regard to

the communitys internalpeace and values. As Merkels remarks above illustrate, the

European mission is now narrated in terms of moving beyond the confines of both the

Union and the continent. That is, the space in which Europes lessons might be fruitfully

applied is widened. The narrative in which this argument unfolds is one of a past so hor-

rific (intensified via boundless) that the fact that it has now been overcome (as Barroso

(2005) puts it, the accounts of murderous conflicts ravaging Europe appear to be con-

fined to the history books) constitutes not simply a triumphant ending to the story, butdemands that the characters of the plot accept their mission for the future, for people

everywhere, for a better world (line 12).

Thus, the standard narration of Europes transition from war to peace, comes to

serve as beginning and middle for a whole new narrative end. The end which finds

its beginning in Europes tragic history is no longer simply the goal of unifying the con-

tinent, but an emerging ambition to play a role beyond Europe. This call is further meta-

phorically justified by characterising the continent as old (line 9). This mobilises

images of wisdom, but also, potentially, of (bodily) weakness. The latter would, argua-

bly, run counter to our interpretation by hampering Europes ability to act. However, thevery same sentence speaks of renew[ed] foundations, that is to say renewed youth and

strength through which Europes wisdom can assert itself. As Prodi (2003b) argues, the

project might be successful in Europe, but this demands that it should now be taken next

door.

When calls for peace refer to Europe nowadays, some may feel they sound hollow and

rhetorical. I do not agree. I do not agree because we can all remember very well the

horrors and massacres of the war fought next door in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. More

recently again, with another war, in a land not far from Europe, in Iraq, millions of men

and women, and especially young people, realised that their own future was at stake, thefuture of the society they lived in, and expected to go on living in. And the streets of our

cities, all our streets and all our cities, whatever the attitudes and policies of our

different governments, were filled with the rainbow flags of peace.

To summarise Prodis argument, see Figure 6:




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Using a vague nomination (some, line 1), Prodi starts by articulating a potential

problem for the original tragic narrative of Europe: Why should Europeans still

remember their dark past and work for peace, if the danger of war in Europe has seem-

ingly disappeared? Indeed, Prodi himself, a few passages earlier, admits that [n]obody

now would regard it as a realistic possibility that war should break out between Franceand Germany, or between Italy and Britain. Nonetheless, Prodi forcefully opposes the

imagined accusation from some that Europes commitment to peace has become

hollow rhetoric. It is unclear who or how significant these imagined accusers are, but

they are soon neutralised by the notorious we in the statement: wecan allremember

verywell the horrors and massacres of the war (line 2ff, italics added). Linguistic

realisations, such as the rhetorical repetition of I do not agree (line 2), which results

in causality (because, line 2) and presupposes this we-group, do furthermore

increase the passages persuasiveness. Consequently, these voices (some) are isolated

and portrayed as almost insane (argumentum ad hominem).Significantly, however, the wars which Prodi now expects every European to remem-

ber are notthe ones which preceded European integration and which elsewhere are the

major representatives of the bitter past: the two World Wars (and the Holocaust).

Rather, it is the wars outside the Union, in the former Yugoslavia but also Iraq (lines

36). Prodis answer to the accusation that it is no longer necessary to fight for peace in

EUrope is to argue that it is now necessary to fight for peace outsidethe Union and

ultimately beyond the European continent. War is still a potential danger even if this

danger now lurks outside EUrope. It is interesting to note that this going outwards is

gradually introduced in spatial terms: starting with next door, that is to say still partof the neighbourhood Europe, and ending in a land not far from Europe (line 3ff), in

other words no longer Europe. The moral obligation to confront Europes dark past

and ensure peace is now implicitly pointing beyond Europe.

The moral/political project which this new version of the tragic narrative legiti-

mates is not only about making war in Europe impossible through integration, but now

entails extending the impossibility of war to the world outside. The moral obligation

of Europeans and one which the demonstrators against the war in Iraq seemingly

embodied now also demands that they oppose war and fight for peace on a global

scale. This new European project is made inclusive and imperative through intensifica-tion and nomination: not only does Prodi speak of our streets and cities (line 6ff), he

also intensifies this statement via the use of all. As such, knowledge related to peace

becomes ourproperty, which does not only imply a fallacy of hasty generalisation, but

also excludes others as being not wholeheartedly committed to peace (an implicit

argumentum ad hominem).

However, the ambition that Europe should now play a role in fighting war and suffer-

ing in the wider world is not simply a moral demand; it also entails a claim that Europe

is uniquely competent to undertake such a task. The argument is that a bitter past has

taught Europeans to co-exist in peaceful diversity, despite their cultural, national and

political differences, and that such lessons are exactly those needed in an increasingly

small globalised world. The following, final, passage by Prodi (2003b) illustrates this

two-step argument:



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Europes policies in favour of peace and, more generally, its approach to international

relations are a reflection of its history. The first contribution that Europe can make is its

own experience. () Europe appears before the world as the most extraordinary

example of democratic governance of the globalisation process. An example towards

which it is no coincidence that other continents such as Latin America or Africa arelooking in the search for new forms of cooperation to overcome old divisions. Born in

order to put an end to war between peoples and in lands that had been the scenes of all

the horrors of conflict, destruction and violence, united Europe is confirmed by

enlargement as a factor of peace, stability and security throughout the continent. () We

Europeans have the ambition and feel that we have a responsibility to contribute to

peace, stability and security not only at regional level but throughout the world.

As illustrated in Figure 7, Europes past wrongdoings and the experience of overcom-

ing its bitter past now legitimises a (superior) position for Europe.

Linguistically, the connection between bitter past and international ambitions isachieved through the foregrounding of Europessuccessfullearning process. The latter

is emphasised through, for example, the formulation most extraordinary (line 3), which

is in line with the previous characterisation of Europe as special. Indeed, the causality

established in line 1ff through reflection, that is through the nominalisation of a com-

plex process and the automatism it implies (history policies in favour of peace),

almost naturalises Europes contribut[ion] to peace, stability and security (line 10).

Similar to the previous section, by speaking of people and lands, historical accu-

racy is sacrificed for the benefit of achieving unity. In other words, through this nomina-

tion, more specific descriptions regarding perpetrator:victim are avoided in order,linguistically, to foreground a united Europe (line 8). We Europeans (line 910) are

not only represented again as a homogeneous group, but are active in our ambition to

bring peace, stability and security (line 11). Others actors are activated only to the

extent that they are looking for our advice (lines 46). And again, a fallacious hasty

generalisationat the end of the passage mystifies existing differences and the very ques-

tion: Why should we (lines 9, 10) actually desire to export our knowledge? Critical

questions concerning our historical responsibility, as well as the apparent responsibil-

ity to teach the world, can thus not even be raised.

What comes to characterise Europes relationship with the wider world is not a narra-tive of continuous self-critical reflection on Europes past wrongdoings. Rather, it is the




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unique knowledge and experience, supposedly gained from the socio-political learning

process, which informs the construction of difference between Europe and non-

European others. The European project through strategies of perspectivisation is

now presented as something to be marvelled at from the outside. The asymmetry is thus

inverted: it is Europe which from an advanced point of experience can now take on

responsibility for the rest of the world, something which is likely to enable a degree of

both superiority towards external others and a self-righteous relationship to its own

past, present and future. The irony is that the barbarity of Europes history now becomesthe raw material on which, through the emphasis on experience rather than on guilt, a

new image of Europe as advanced and knowledgeable, as civilised, is built. The tragic

narratives moral dictum, that is to take responsibility for ones own former crimes, turns

into a (potentially) self-righteous, patronising ambition to take responsibility for the rest

of the world.

In Figure 8, we summarise our analysis above by making heuristicuse of the idea of

semantic fields developed by Koselleck (for a similar application of the DHA, see

Krzyanowski, 2010: 129131). The image summarises the discourse analysed on

Europes identity as one predominantly about values which are rooted in a bitter past

(left) but in danger of collapsing into self-righteousness (right).

Conclusion

In this article, we have examined narrations of aEUropean identity by leading European

politicians. We proceeded from a theoretical foundation delivered by the DHA, theories

of narrativity and conceptual history. By utilising CL tools along the lines of Kosellecks

three dimensions (temporal, spatial, hierarchical), we combined computer-assisted

downsizing with a detailed analysis of specific texts through CDA.

What this analysis reveals is that the essence of Europe, its soul, is rendered in terms

of common values which are made European through their inscription into a narrative

of a common bitter past. This narrative of post-1945 Europe is not dominated by heroic

Figure 8.The semantic field of Europe in the speeches investigated.



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or gloryfying self-perceptions, but by admissions of wrongdoing. What is even more

striking, however, is that when this narrative is brought into contact with articulations

about Europes relationship to its contemporary surroundings, its basic mode of self-

description discreetly changes. The Koselleckian spatial dimension of inside:outside

does not, in Europes case, result in a kind of self-effacing inferiority of the self in rela-tion to the other. Rather, differentiation is made between Europe which has learned

and the external other which lacks this development. Therefore, self-critical narra-

tives about a bitter past can become the foundation of European superiority expressed

in ambitions to teach the world.

In a wider perspective, this is significant because it questions the assumption that self-

critical narratives automatically immunise communities against self-aggrandising or

self-complacent modes of identity construction. The case of Europe, to the extent ana-

lysed above, indicates that slippage from a self-critical to a self-righteous identity is still

possible. This mode of subjectivity might, by reference to Albert Camus last novel, TheFall, be described as judge-penitence. A judge-penitent, Camus (2006: 87ff) notes,

claims that the more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you (see Forchtner

(in press) for a conceptualisation and operationalisation of judge-penitence).

This does not imply that narratives which refer to a bitter past always and necessar-

ily involve judgement on others, or that no true learning can be gained from self-

critical narrations of ones past. Arguably, if lessons are indeed learned, they have to

guide (linguistic) action. Indeed, it would be questionable whether learning lessons

from the past would be achieved if it resulted in paralysis. But how this activity is semioti-

cally realised is crucial as narrating a bitter past is, in itself, no guarantee against anattitude of superiority and arrogance towards the other.

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Ruth Wodak and Majid KhosraviNik for their comments on an earlier version

of this article. We are also grateful to Costas Gabrielatos for advice concerning the downsizing

procedure. All mistakes remain our own.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial ornot-for-profit sectors.

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Author biographies

Bernhard Forchtner is a Wilhelm-von-Humboldt fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences,

Humboldt University, Berlin. He obtained his doctoral degree from the Department of Sociology

and the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, UK. His thesis

explored the relation between public apologies, societal learning and self-righteousness. He was

the recipient of a DOC-fellowship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and has published in

the field of memory studies, at the interface of sociological theory and critical discourse analysis,

and on prejudice and discrimination.

Christoffer Klvraa is an assistant professor in the Department for European Studies at the

Institute of History and Area Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. In his research, he has

written on theories of discourse and identity, issues of nationalism and ideology, and contemporary

and historical notions of European identity. In his new book, entitled Imagining Europe as a

Global Player, he focuses on the narratives and discourses through which the European

Commission is constructing a common European identity in connection with ideas about a

common European foreign policy.