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European parliaments under scrutiny: discourse strategies and interaction practices

Ilie’s collection assesses the discursive practices observed in the European Parliament and 10 national parliaments in Europe. From the still fledgling parliamentary politics in the postcommunist Eastern and Central Europe to the mother of the Westminster parliamentary model (the British Parliament), this collection provides a thorough and provocative analysis of ideological, procedural, and rhetorical nature of parliamentary communication. With the ever-growing influence of European politics on the rest of the world, this work is of global relevance. More importantly, however, it is a welcome insight into parliamentary discourses as both representations and building blocks of contemporary social and political environments. The book is organized into four sections, the first of which explores parliamentary roles and identities. Van Dijk analyses the performance of political identity using context theory and provides an excellent and concise summary of what characterizes social (including political) identities. He argues that identities are not locally or contextually constructed as some theory suggests, but are, however, applied dependent on context. Examples from the 2003 British and Spanish parliamentary debates leading up to the Iraq war illustrate how multiple political identities are enacted by politicians for rhetorical purposes. Ilie examines how parliamentary debates co-construct identities and how members of parliament (MPs) work to address multiple audiences in debates – the addressee (the opposing MP, for instance), but also those for whom the speech is really intended (e.g. voters), adding that in parliamentary debates, MPs are expected to perform both their institutional and the personal identities. Marques provides a straight-forward but rich analysis of the use of ‘we’ and ‘I’ in Portugal’s parliamentary debates and interprets how the pronoun ‘I’ can imply leadership, responsibility, authority, and independence. The second section of the book considers the ‘ritualized strategies of parliamentary confrontation’. Antelmi and Santulli examine the speeches to present new government to the Italian Parliament. By comparing two leaders’ speeches (in 1996 and 2001), they show how institutionally similar and highly ritualized discourse can still significantly differ in meaning and ideological representations, through varying emphasis on institutional role versus personal position, argumentation versus explanation, and shifting use of rationality, morals, and emotion. Zima, Brône, and Feyaerts analyse spontaneous interruptive comments that upset the ritual of the Austrian Parliament but are nevertheless quite common. They focus on the repetition as an effective and frequently used strategy both to bolster a claim and to undermine it, describing how opponents’ utterances can be exploited (‘twisted’) to elevate one’s own status and discredit political adversaries. Lorda Mur looks at questions to the government in the French Parliament to show how confrontation is stressed in such addresses to emphasize that MPs are fighting for their voters, but also concludes that MPs’ speeches generally lack creativity and new ideas. The third section consists of three chapters that shed light on post-communist parliaments in Europe. Ilie’s second contribution to the collection discusses how, despite the quick change of rule in Romania in 1989, institutional democratization has taken several years. After the fall of communism more than 150 political parties emerged, and multiple voices converged, but