Harmony and Melody in Discourse on European Cohesion

• Published in: European planning studies Vol. 22; no. 3; pp. 627 - 647
• Main Authors: Elissalde, Bernard, Santamaria, Frédéric, Jeanne, Philippe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 04-03-2014; Taylor & Francis Ltd; Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
• Subjects: Architecture, space management; Data analysis; Discourse analysis; Humanities and Social Sciences; Institutionalization; Software; Studies; Territorial issues; Europe; European Union; Lexical Analysis; Spatial Planning
• ISSN: 0965-4313; 1469-5944
• DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2013.782389

From a corpus constituted by the five Cohesion Reports written by the European Commission, the article, using the methods of textual analysis, highlights the production of a European discourse on the territories participating to a process of institutionalization. Thus, starting from various authors analyses who validate the idea of institutionalization, the authors propose here to further explore this idea, using a method based on a lexical analysis software. The aim is then, on the one hand, to assess the extent to which the discourse of the Commission has elements of stability to justify the idea of institutionalization or, in the other hand, the elements of change over time that could compromise the very idea of institutionalization. The authors present the following results: the Commission discourse has important features of stability. Nevertheless, beyond this finding, there are changes at work. Their expression is rendered possible by the polysemy of the notions mobilized, and they are driven partly by a "rational" representation, but above all by the interplay of the succession of tensions and mind-shaping contexts in the construction of Europe.