ABSTRACT The first issue that comes up as one tries to investigate the way in which the EU institutions managed the COVID crisis, by focusing on the link between EU discourse and laws – what we call here with Wodak (2021) legitimation - is the contrast between a supranational body and the national response that the management of the crisis immediately brought about. The global crisis triggered by COVID-19 has been so much politically nationalised and translated through national normative procedures, in so many ways and by different governments, that it is quite hard to find an interpretative key to understand the role played by a political actor such as the EU is supposed to be. The EU took the stage a long time after WHO declared that COVID -19 was a public health emergency of international concern (30 Jan 2020) and national governments started protecting their own citizens. Taking into account previous studies on the analysis of the way experts communicate with the public (see Garzone, Catenaccio, Greco, Doerr, 2018), the aim of this paper is to provide a discoursive investigation on the EU communication campaign on Corona virus. The object of research will be based on the multilingual EU webpages categorised as “Coronavirus response”, (https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-response_en), in which the EU Commission displays a wide range of communication instruments to ensure proper information about the pandemic, such as videos, tweets and webpages. The theoretical framework and methodology will be based on a broad CDA approach (Hart 2011), focusing both on the textual dimension (Wodak 2021) and its multimodal representations (Kress 2010). Results show, as it happened in the past, that the EU has proved to be a powerful economic actor again, but a quite weak political one. One cannot help noticing that the economic drive has been a primary one in the EU approach to the crisis, and this is clearly displayed in its interaction with EU citizens. The EU current communication strategies on Covid crisis are the strategies of an economic buyer working on behalf of its member states, but not an independent political player.
Covid-19: an overview on the EU communication campaign / Donadio, Paolo. - (2021). (Intervento presentato al convegno Legal Communication on Covid-19. A Linguistic and Discursive Approach across Contexts and Media tenutosi a Università di Milano, Dipartimento di Scienze della Mediazione Linguistica e di Studi Interculturali nel 01 dicembre 2021).
Covid-19: an overview on the EU communication campaign
Paolo Donadio
2021
Abstract
ABSTRACT The first issue that comes up as one tries to investigate the way in which the EU institutions managed the COVID crisis, by focusing on the link between EU discourse and laws – what we call here with Wodak (2021) legitimation - is the contrast between a supranational body and the national response that the management of the crisis immediately brought about. The global crisis triggered by COVID-19 has been so much politically nationalised and translated through national normative procedures, in so many ways and by different governments, that it is quite hard to find an interpretative key to understand the role played by a political actor such as the EU is supposed to be. The EU took the stage a long time after WHO declared that COVID -19 was a public health emergency of international concern (30 Jan 2020) and national governments started protecting their own citizens. Taking into account previous studies on the analysis of the way experts communicate with the public (see Garzone, Catenaccio, Greco, Doerr, 2018), the aim of this paper is to provide a discoursive investigation on the EU communication campaign on Corona virus. The object of research will be based on the multilingual EU webpages categorised as “Coronavirus response”, (https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-response_en), in which the EU Commission displays a wide range of communication instruments to ensure proper information about the pandemic, such as videos, tweets and webpages. The theoretical framework and methodology will be based on a broad CDA approach (Hart 2011), focusing both on the textual dimension (Wodak 2021) and its multimodal representations (Kress 2010). Results show, as it happened in the past, that the EU has proved to be a powerful economic actor again, but a quite weak political one. One cannot help noticing that the economic drive has been a primary one in the EU approach to the crisis, and this is clearly displayed in its interaction with EU citizens. The EU current communication strategies on Covid crisis are the strategies of an economic buyer working on behalf of its member states, but not an independent political player.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
