Nazli Avdan
Competing constructions of groupings in the European Parliament
The European Parliament is the scene where certain issues concerning over 500 million
peoples of “Europe” are publicly debated. It is the scene where groupings and intergroup
boundaries are discursively co-constructed. In other words, definitions of ‘we’ and ‘other’ are
debated in the European Parliament as the speakers pursue their political agendas.
Simultaneously, intergroup boundaries are drawn, maintained, and/ or transgressed as
Members of the Parliament take stance on behalf a grouping in relation to presupposed other
groupings and argue what differentiates the ‘self’ from ‘others’. That is done through the twostancetaking activities: ‘positioning’ and ‘alignment’. This research in progress examines how
groupings and intergroup boundaries are discursively constructed in the European
Parliament.