Since 1989, Europe's eastern rim has been in constant flux. Political and economic transformations have triggered redefinitions of cultural identity. Combining theory-oriented and empirical approaches, this book analyzes modes of identity construction in public discourse, particularly focusing on national and cross-national rhetorical strategies related to European Union enlargement and EU policy towards southeast Europe.

This volume investigates competing ideas, images, and stereotypes of a European ‘East’, exploring its role in defining European and national conceptions of self and other since the eighteenth century. Through a set of original case studies, this collection explores the intersection between discourses about a more distant, exotic, or colonial ‘Orient’ with a more immediate ‘East’. The book considers this shifting, imaginary border from different points of view and demonstrates that the location, definition, and character of the ‘East’, often associated with socio-economic backwardness and other unfavourable attributes, depended on historical circumstances, political preferences, cultural assumptions, and geography. Spanning two centuries, this study analyses the ways that changing ideals and persistent clichéd attitudes have shaped the conversation about and interpretations of Eastern Europe. Europe and the East will be essential reading for anyone interested in images and ideas of Europe, European identity, and conceptions of the ‘East’ in intellectual and cultural history.

How do people construct collective identity during profound societal transformations? This volume examines the discursive construction of identity related to important national holidays in nine countries of Central Europe and the Balkans: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia. The chapters focus on the decades during which these countries moved from communism towards democracy and a market economy. This transition saw revivals of national values and a new significance of regional and transnational ties, entangled with negotiations of national identity that have been particularly lively in discourse concerning national holidays. The chapters apply discourse analysis in addition to approaches from history, sociology, political science, and anthropology. All of the analyses make use of empirical material in the Slavic languages, including newspaper articles, interviews and other media contributions, sermons, addresses, and speeches by members of the political elite.

Sport during Cold War has recently begun to be studied in more depth. Some scholars have edited a book about the US and Soviet sport diplomacy and show ow the government of these two countries have used sport during this period, notably as a tool of "soft power" during the Olympic games. Our goal is to continue in this direction and to focus more on the sport field as a place of exchanges during the Cold War. Regarding this point, our aim is to show that there were events "beyond boycotts"many and that unknown connections existed inside sport. Morevoer, many actors were involved in these exchanges. Thus, it is important not only to focus on the action of States, but also on private actors (international sporting bodies and journalists), considering that they acted around sport (an "apolitic" field) as it was tool to maintain links between the two blocs. Our project offers a good opportunity for young scholars to present original research based on new materials (notably the use of institutional or personals archives). Morevoer, it is also a step forward with a view to conduct research within a global history paradigm, one that is still underused in sport academic fields.

Recent years have witnessed the European Union struggling to keep Europe together in increasingly difficult economic and political circumstances. Communication within and about European institutions has become more challenging in this perplexing political environment, demonstrating the complex nature of EU political discourse. In order to highlight these complexities, the contributors to this volume present different theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of diverse facets of EU discourse, realized through a variety of linguistic and discursive phenomena. The approaches represent rhetorical theory, metaphor and conceptual theory, cognitive and corpus linguistics, lexical statistics, polyphony, logical semantics, pragmatic and philosophical perspectives. Through this multitude of perspectives the book complements existing approaches and suggests new approaches in the study of political discourse.

This innovative and thought-provoking study puts forth a compelling analysis of the constitutive nexus at the heart of the European refugee conundrum. It maps and historically contextualises some of the distinctive challenges that pervasive ethnic and cultural pluralism present to real politics as on the level of political theorizing. By systematically integrating hitherto insufficiently linked research perspectives in a novel way, it lays open a number of paradoxical constellations and regressive tendencies in contemporary European democracy. It thereby redirects attention to the ways in which liberal thought and liberal democratic institutions shape, interact with, and may even provide justification for illiberal and exclusionary practices. This book thus makes an important contribution to the analysis of post-migrant realities in Europe and the ways in which they are defined by imperial legacies, punitive migration regimes, the culturalization of mainstream politics, and the discursive construction of a European Other.

This study examines conflicts arising from the dual processes of Europeanization and post-socialist transformations, from gaining independence in 1991 to facing the current economic crisis. Through an in-depth comparison of Estonia and Slovenia over time, it shows how elite actors within these two very different welfare capitalist states resisted EU pressures to change their cohesive and successful national models.