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

Understanding-in-use Central Motif Rules of Framing Concise terminology that encompasses repeatedly occurring argumentative structures, positionings, models, etc. Contain rules of discourse: what can be expressed and how, which alternatives are foreclosed? 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

Some preliminary findings 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 Framing Spectre of Enlightenment Functionality & rationality