European Identities in Discourse: A Transnational Citizens’ Perspective (original) (raw)

2020, European Journal of Communication

Given a relative lack of empiricism in the study of silence and absence so far, this collection, to a large extent, contributes to 'promote the empirical study of phenomena of discursive absences and to incorporate silence and absence as a line of enquiry in discourse studies' (p. 2). As a whole, it is an inspiring and well-organized volume. On the one hand, it is wide-ranging and diverse in content. Aside from bringing together a broad selection of essays pertinent to silence and absence, ranging from various media discourse to police interviews, it also presents cross-disciplinary studies on multiple issues, such as migration, national images, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) uprisings, discrimination of sexual minorities and environmental problems. On the other hand, it employs both quantitative and qualitative research in most chapters, and it also provides multitudinous methodological approaches, encompassing but not limited to content analysis, semiotic analysis, corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS), framing, conversation analysis and diachronic analysis. Nevertheless, it would be more comprehensive and persuasive if more cases of meaningful silence discourse were offered and analysed, since 'most of the contributions deal with absence' (p. 10) on the basis of media discourse.