National_Identity_and_Europe_in_Times_of.pdf

Transnationalism is a multifaceted phenomenon which has impacted on society and challenged,inter alia, the paradigm of national affiliations. The trasnationalisation of the EU-ropean field hasarguably contributed to a political arena where embryonic post-national identities and new forms of belongingare being negotiated, challenged and legitimized. By investigating the discourses of members of a transnationalNGO of ‘active’ citizens, this paper seeks to understand how current European identities are discursivelyconstructed from bottom up in the public sphere. Appropriating CDA this paper offers insights intohow discursive strategies and linguistic devices used by the speakers, and predicated on the indexicalityof transnational frames, construct Europe and patterns of belonging to it. This paper suggests differentconceptual dimensions of transnationalism enacted by members in discourse which are conveniently summarisedas: nation-centric, Euro-centric, and cosmopolitan.