Hermeneutic Encounterns and the EU’s Communication Strategy: Citizenship and the European Narrative

Hannes Hansen-Magnusson

Problem: Multiple deficits• Deficient “citizenship

practice”:– Entitlement to rights– Access to rights– Legal identity– Belonging

• Euroscepticism:– Loss of identity– Loss of status

Effect:

-Declining order?

-Long-term viability threatened?

Citizenship practice: a problem of understanding

Constructivism

• Critical Constructivism– Meaning intersubjectively generated

– Communication as process

– Subject positions

-legal & cultural validity (dual quality)

-Different types of norms

-Contestation

Hermeneutics • Hans-Georg Gadamer: Normative order as a

continuous process of understanding– “fusion of horizons” – unsurpassable resource of “Being”,

subject position– Prejudice: resource for understanding, facilitates rhetoric

Subjective meaning A1 understanding B1

Meaning-in-use: transposition into speech or writing A2

(symbolic coding)

Meaning-in-use: transposition into speech/writing/ meaningful action B2

(symbolic coding)

message

message

Ill. 1: Normative order as emerging from an interactive process of understanding

Attentional plain Focus

Interaction Positioning of roles represented in the text/speech; constellation of roles towards each other; characteristic features

Syntax Grammatical features that present the object via recourse of selected linguistic rules, thereby creating mental representations of the object while excluding alternatives

Semantics Lexic of text/speech: vocabulary and type of language that structures mental representations

Narrative gestalt Reoccurring patterns of the text; rhetorical strategy or plot

Central Motif Rules of FramingConcise terminology that encompasses repeatedly occurring argumentative structures, positionings, models, etc.

Contain rules of discourse: what can be expressed and how, which alternatives are foreclosed?

Understanding-in-use

Interaction -Triangular relation between Commission, Member States & Citizens-Commission: knowledgeable, need for “immediate experience”-Citizens hindered by insufficient capacity

Syntax -Simplicity & clarity-Address “all walks of life”

Semantics -Citizens as humanized entity: ontologizing citizenship-Empathic Commission, saviour-Managerial rhetoric

Narrative gestalt -‘immediate experience’ needed – “closing the gap”-Citizenship deficit manageable (curable)

Central Motif Rules of FramingSpectre of Enlightenment Functionality & rationality

Some preliminary findings