The Human Face of the European Institutions: a critical study

The Human Face of the European Institutions: A Critical Study Recent studies on the informative material made available to the general public by the European Union (Caliendo, forthcoming; Magistro 2007 and forthcoming) have shown that the community institutions notably draw from a variety of different genres and discursive practices to appeal to their audience. More specifically, the European Union (EU) benefits from orders of discourse that are generally found in communication in the commodity sector. The spread of consumer culture has affected the way public entities present and manage themselves, leading to a more commercial approach in terms of the objects they deal with (i.e. public products), the beneficiaries of these objects (i.e. customers), and the way public entities represent these objects and address such beneficiaries (i.e. the adoption of a promotional style). Hence, the public sector has lately been experiencing a process of commodification of social life, bringing along elements of marketization of public and institutional discourse (Fairclough, 1993; Fairclough and Wodak, 1997). Albeit critical research focusing specifically on EU informative documents is still at its early stage, the above-mentioned trends have been documented under many respects, looking at revealing instances of lexicon and grammar, as well as larger-scale discursive and visual elements. This paper intends to broaden investigations on the strategies and genres adopted by the EU to win consensus and promote its institutional structure. Attention is called to alternative tools supplementing the (ever-growing) array of discursive devices and structures employed in EU brochures of comparable nature. In particular, focus will be placed on the “humanization” of the European Union, achieved by means of the incorporation of EU employees’ profiles in the Union’ informative material. The attribution of precise names, faces, roles and objectives to activities carried out at the European Union will be examined and the social impact of such attribution discussed within the framework of critical discourse analysis. References Caliendo, Giuditta, Forthcoming, Language and Citizenship: Variation in Institutional Discourse. Paper presented at the international conference “Political Linguistics 2007”. University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland, 13-15 September 2007. Fairclough, Norman & Wodak, Ruth (1997), Critical discourse analysis. In Teun A. Van Dijk (ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction. Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction – Volume 2. London: SAGE, 258-284. Fairclough, Norman (1993), Critical discourse analysis and the marketization of public discourse: the universities. In Discourse and Society, 4/2. London: SAGE. 133-168. Magistro, Elena (2007), “Promoting the European Identity: Politeness Strategies in the Discourse of the European Union”. In CADAAD Journal, 2007, 1/1: 51-73. Available at: http://www.cadaad.org/ejournal/2007/1/magistro Magistro, Elena, Forthcoming, The Marketization of Institutional Discourse: The Case of the European Union. Paper presented at the international conference “Political Linguistics 2007”. University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland, 13-15 September 2007.