Sailing to Ithaka The transmutation of Greek left-populism in discourses about the European Union

Dimitris Serafis*, E. Dimitris Kitis, Stavros Assimakopoulos

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper examines the reasoning lines in PM Alexis Tsipras’ political discourse in critical moments of SYRIZA’s tenure as the ruling party in Greece. Adopting a CDS perspective, we zoom in on the patterns that underlie the (de)legitimization of the crisis-ridden EU in three seminal speeches by PM Tsipras during the Greek/EU financial crisis. To this end, we integrate systemic-functional and cognitive linguistic tools with a view to scrutinizing representational meaning, before turning to employ the notions of endoxon and topos/locus as a means of studying the particular argumentative inferences, triggered by the respective discursive representations. Through this lens, we show how the overall argumentation can be seen as supporting the (de-)legitimation of dominant EU austerity perspectives while transforming SYRIZA into a pro-austerity voice.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)344-369
JournalJournal of Language and Politics
Volume21
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8 Mar 2022

Keywords

  • (de-)legitimation
  • Argumentation theory
  • Critical discourse studies (CDS)
  • European Union
  • Greek/EU financial crisis
  • Populism
  • SYRIZA/Tsipras

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