We the Balkanians: a Critical Analysis of the Political Discourse

The focus of this book is to analyze the political discourse of the Balkans based on the related literature of Critical Discourse Analysis. The context of the discourse fragments analyzed is related to political or economical summits or forums, where the high-profile Balkan politicians give their speeches. The aim is to understand how the European Integration agenda, which resembles to an ideological project, influences the way the political discourse in the Balkans is shaped. The way a common Balkan identity is indexed and the linguistic strategies, such as Syntactic Transformations or Spatial and Temporal deictics are employed to refer to the common problematic past of the Balkans, or to metaphorically map the European Integration Process are the focus points of this research. The findings of this research underline the fact that the European Integration agenda has eased the ethnic tones and the conflicts in the Balkans region. The politicians tend to shape a different political reality in the region, through their speeches by indexing a common Balkan Identity.