Europe is the name for a scintillating variety of historically emerged concepts constantly
developed and discussed over time. Its complexity and fuzziness is reflected in a multitude of
myths topoi symbols and boundaries which all constitute shared knowledge of the concept of
EUROPE and which continue to influence attempts to (de- and re-)construct European identity.
The case studies collected in this volume investigate the competing concepts of Europe in
political and public discourses from a wide range of perspectives (e.g. frame semantics
discourse linguistics multimodal analysis) focusing on the following aspects: How is EUROPE
conceptualised (re-)negotiated and legitimised by different political actors political bodies
and institutions? How does the European idea change throughout history and how is the
re-emerging idea of nationality evaluated?
