What is it about?
This article explains the theoretical framework behind studying persuasive devices in policymaking, with special attention to categories that discourse analysts have found useful in studying the legitimizing potential of presuppositions. It presents the context, content and significance of ERA policy agenda. The results section shows the analysis of verb choices, evaluative modifiers and rhetorical constructions as well as catchphrases. In the next step, the study traces legitimization techniques and maps arguments with regard to policy responses to presupposed challenges, risks and requirements in the European Research Area.
Featured Image
Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash
Why is it important?
It is important to trace how the EU Directorate General for Research and Innovation’s “European Research Area Policy Agenda: Overview of Actions for the Period 2022-2024” justifies the twenty actions to boost research excellence, investment and reform, coordination and support, or green and digital transformation of the academia. The policy draws on persuasive presuppositions that are hard to question and builds on a metaphor of common European "knowledge market” which obscures the fact that academia is a sector that perhaps should not be subjected to market-based pressures.
Perspectives
The positive evaluation of twenty actions, signaled through the use of modifying words or phrases, comparatives or collocations, offers reassurances that the future implementation of the agenda will benefit all stakeholders – research institutions, students and researchers, regional and national actors, businesses and administrations, citizens and the public - even though the interests of these parties are not always aligned.
Dr hab. Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska
University of Opole
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Legitimizing the interventions recommended in “European Research Area Policy Agenda 2022–2024”, Journal of Language and Politics, March 2024, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/jlp.23043.mol.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
