Al-khitāb al-siyāsī al-‘awrubbī hawla al-mudun al-muta’addidat al-thaqāfāt: dirāsah fī asālīb al-nafī wa al-salb [= Study on negations and negativity in European political discourse of intercultural Cities]

Diversity has been one of the key words in European policy rhetoric for a couple of decades. Besides being a popular key word or slogan, it has become an important domain of governance in European political organizations. At the focus of our study is Intercultural Cities (ICC), a joint initiative launched in 2008 by the European Commission and the Council of Europe. The ICC initiative seeks to strengthen co-operative and positive encountering between people and develop a model supporting intercultural integration within diversified urban communities. Since the policy discourse of the ICC initiative gives advice on how to improve a social situation that is considered to be deplorable and unfavorable, its policy rhetoric is based on strategic uses of negations and negative concepts. In our study we ask: How is intercultural urban policy linguistically produced in the ICC initiative? As a result of linguistic and discourse analysis, we claim that the intercultural urban policy in the ICC initiative is ‘negative politics’. The language used in the policy rhetoric brings to the fore various conflicts and problems related to the coexistence of distinct cultures. In addition, intercultural diversity is discussed in the rhetoric of the initiative by using negations and negative expressions.

Publication year:2016

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