Communicating European Values in Institutional Discourse: a Statistical Model for the Analysis of Citizens’ Perception of the EU

The study draws from a comparative analysis of one of EUROPA’s main informative sections, “The EU at a Glance”, in its previous (2002) and current version (2009), with a view to investigating the way institutional and social changes are reflected in discursive practices (Fairclough 1992). In particular, the comparison highlights the emergence of new strategies adopted by the EU in promoting itself, as well as a steady process of ‘neutralization’ of the identity values being advocated at supranational level in order to gather consensus among citizens: the EU does no longer appeal to its historical and cultural common heritage to legitimate its entity, but it is increasingly stressing the objective and tangible benefits that derive from EU membership and that the EU itself offers and ‘advertises’ as a real service-provider (e.g. better living standards, consumer rights, lower tariffs, higher mobility, etc.). The prioritization of these new values is demonstrated by means of a linguistic analysis, which unveils how these longitudinal changes are reflected in forms of linguistic realisation in the new online version of the section under investigation (“The EU at a Glance”). The language analysis is complemented by a statistical study carried out by a model for qualitative assessment (D’Elia and Piccolo 2005; Piccolo 2006) which demonstrates how the discursive transformations in the web site directly reflect and respond to a real change in citizens’ vision and perception of EU values.