Constructing a Narrative of European Integration in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine: A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis
Abstract
Social transformations constitute and are constituted by discourse. The discursive construction of the narrative of European integration is an essential part of public policy making as well as shaping socially shared knowledge and attitudes in Ukraine. At the same time, European integration as a discursive construct is subject to modification in the course of time and /or in different settings of institutional communication. The objective of this article is twofold: to reveal how consistently the narrative of European integration has been constructed in discursive practices of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (the Ukrainian Parliament) in the 21st century and to contribute to the elaboration of a corpus-based methodology suitable for analyzing discourses of social change over time in the Ukrainian language. A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches is employed to treat the data coming from an ad hoc built electronic corpus of written texts posted on the official website of the Verkhovna Rada between 2002 and 2017. The findings include patterns of naming and reference to European integration as well as the distribution and dynamics of their usage within the observed period. The uncovered modifications in the discursive construction of European integration are interpreted with respect to a wider socio-political context. Since this research is ongoing, avenues of further work on this subject are outlined.
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