4.20 ARQUETAS Y OTROS ELEMENTOS DE DRENAJE 4.20.1 Definición y alcance

The item ‘eu’ collocates with ‘founded’ (t-score 2.77), ‘founding’ (t-score 2.19) and ‘establishment’ (t-score 2.21).78 _{This already gives an inkling that there is debate about the}

EU’s creation. Indeed, an examination of these co-occurrences shows that the community debates the EU’s creation. While all these collocations were examined, the following focuses on findings from the co-occurrences of ‘eu’ and ‘founded’ (and expansions of these co-occurrences) since the other collocations do not present any additional insights.

78 _{All uses of ‘establishment’ refer to the ‘foundation’ of an institution, etc. and not to ‘establishment’ in}

All co-occurrences of ‘founded’ and ‘eu’ are passivised statements on the EU’s establishment. The first two lines in Table 18, which are the only ones referring to who supposedly founded the EU, have already been addressed above because they deal with the idea of Nazi Germany as a predecessor of the EU, e.g. line two is part of the ad lapidem argumentation referred to in section 7.1. The remainder give an insight into the forces behind European integration into the EU.

Lines five to eight can be addressed with notable brevity – these are merely parts of brief discussions on founding dates of different EU predecessor organisations. The only controversy in these contexts is whether signing of a treaty or its coming into effect ought to be cited, e.g. line five “the catch being that we create ambiguity by citing both dates. […] The EU was founded on 1 November 1993” in response to the posting “date of establishment of the EU in the intro gets repeatedly changed between 1992 (when the Maastricht Treaty was signed) and 1993 (when the treaty came into force)”.

Table 18 Collocation ‘eu’ and ‘founded’

1 ersion of the historical background of the EU. It was founded by people like Fre 2 azi story is just as likely as to say that the EU was forecast and founded by Jesus 3 have a comment in the intro implying the EU was founded in 1957 with the EC, r 4 s is if we can categorically state when the EU was founded. If we can state this, w 5 fer to be authoritative above all else. The EU was founded on 1 November 1993. 6 20 January 2009 (UTC) What about: The EU was founded on 1 November 1993, 7 1:16, 19 June 2014 (UTC) Year the EU was founded Under the “Environ 8 entence leads off with “In 1957, when the EU was founded, “ The Wikipedia articl

Outside versus inside forces

More notably, the community debates different ideas concerning the driving forces behind the EU’s establishment. An expanded perspective on lines three and four in Table 18 allow an insight into a thread that proposes different ideas concerning the forces that led to the creation of the EU. In this thread, one Wikipedian proposes the Marshall Plan79 as sparking the creation of the EU:

The Marshall Plan has also long been seen as one of the first elements of European integration, as it erased tariff trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate the economy on a continental level. So maybe the EU traces its origins to this?

79 _{The Marshall Plan, also called “European Recovery Program”, was a US American policy aimed at}

Argumentation analysis and Systemic Functional Grammar shed light on noteworthy aspects of this posting. The Wikipedian’s claim is given in the last sentence and is weakened with a question mark and the use of ‘maybe’. Still, the sentence does not take interrogative form and the poster does present data to support the claim. They do so by providing a description of the Marshall Plan that depicts it as aiming for European integration especially on economic cooperation, i.e. the motivation behind European integration is depicted as an economic one. This description is given as a passivised mental process where the sensor is suppressed, that is, this plan “has been seen” instead of drawing on a relational process – the plan ‘is’ or ‘was’. This reference to perception only and the omission of the sensor makes the argument’s data less vulnerable to question since first, this sensing entity cannot be clearly identified and questioned and second, making a statement about an unknown entity’s perception of the Plan’s purpose is difficult to challenge. Then, the Marshall Plan is depicted as an actor ‘erasing’ tariffs and ‘setting up’ institutions, i.e. the actual people conceiving of the plan and carrying it out are suppressed entirely.

Another Wikipedian rejects this view and proposes another scenario that actually incorporates concrete entities/individuals as driving forces behind European integration:

The earliest and most concrete ideas and attempts to unite Europe […] were Churchill’s 1946 call for a “United States of Europe”, the Council of Europe and the failed Defence Community.

The difference to the preceding posting is striking. Here the poster specifies an alleged initiator of European integration – Winston Churchill, who as sayer (“call for”) is not the one who ‘attempted this unification’ but is represented as the one with “concrete ideas” mentioned in the first sentence of the posting. Then the poster refers to two pan-European institutions who, be default, are implied as the ones driving “attempts to unite Europe”. Altogether, the Wikipedian conveys two ideas. First, they relocate the driving force behind the EU’s creation (or that of its predecessors) from the US to Europe, that is, instead of an outside force sparking European integration (Marshall Plan), this posting proposes the view that it was an idea generated in Europe. Second, European integration is not depicted as one country’s or even just one country’s representative’s programme. Rather, the Council of Europe as an international organisation and the failed but international Defence Community (see 1.2) are cited as driving or at least attempting this unification.

Another Wikipedian gives yet another, if related perspective on this issue. This posting proposes an even more Europe-centred approach and suggests that the driving forces were the involved countries themselves:

we should consider the EU as the result of “self organisation” of the countries; for that reason alone I would not go back to the Marshall plan. Interesting in this discussion is of course the evolutionary, rather than revolutionary course towards uniting Europe

This rejection is based on the idea of a European-centred move to European integration driven by the countries involved themselves rather than an outside force (“for this reason alone I would not […]”). Furthermore, this poster allows for the widest possible scope of who might have participated in this “self organisation” resulting in the EU since the actors here are “countries”, which suppresses the concrete individuals who took action80_{. Apart}

from this, it is also worth noting that the poster does not actually reject the Marshall Plan as a key point of origin. Rather, they merely “would not go back” to it based on the idea that European countries’ actions and “self organisation” ought to be seen as the central factor resulting in the EU. In terms of deontic modality, their use of “should” makes clear that the idea of “self organsiation” is this editor’s preferred historical narrative of the EU’s foundation and they also use “we” as in-group marker for the Wikipedia community to possibly persuade their interlocutors to entertain the idea; however, they also mitigate their proposition by use of “consider”, i.e. a mental process, rather than, for instance, using a verbal process in the sense of ‘we should state in the article that X’. Arguably, this form of mitigation is not to be understood as insecurity with respect to the proposition ‘EU as result of countries’ self-organisation’ but serves to avoid alienating interlocutors and thereby further persuade them to subscribe to the given perspective.

Finally, the posting’s last sentence deserves brief mention because it adds a noteworthy aspect concerning the construction of the EU. The idea here is that instead of revolution, the path to the EU was an evolutionary one. The reference to revolution versus evolution emphasises the juxtaposition between human-made upheaval and natural non- violent progression. Thereby, the poster insinuates that the EU’s development is natural, possibly inevitable and definitely a sign of progress.

Altogether, this thread presents three remarkable elements concerning who the driving force behind the EU’s establishment was – first, one perspective is that the EU was initiated by an outside source (Marshall Plan), second, another view is that particular

European entities/individuals drove European integration. Third, the loss of reference to specific individuals or even specific countries who worked towards the unification of Europe allows maximum inclusion of which European “countries” were the driving forces behind the ‘self-organised’ creation of the EU.

The discussion of who or what drove European integration is not continued, nor is it ever discussed again. This might be the case since the Wikipedia article on the EU does not strictly require content on the motivations and impetus behind the creation of the EU. 7.3 Interim Conclusion

Generally and in contrast to the discussions touching upon history in chapter 6, the community focuses on the EU’s institutional history in this corpus. That is, here, the community only refers to broader historical events in connection to the institution’s establishment and, thereby, the prevalent construction/representation of the EU is one of an institution that, on the one hand, might be comparable to previous entities (Nazi Germany) and, on the other hand, is the result and consequence of other entities’ actions (e.g. European countries, Winston Churchill). It is also worth noting that the Wikipedia community repeatedly emphasises the construction of the EU as an institution resulting from its constituents’ voluntarily joining – both when countering the idea that EU and Nazi Germany are similar and when discussion the driving force(s) behind the institution’s creation. Interestingly, the focus is again predominantly on the level of the nation rather than on the individual citizens’ actions. Hence, the preoccupation with the nation state as fixed category by which the Wikipedia community operates is once more demonstrated and reinforced.

All in all, the EU is found not to be a successor of Nazi Germany based on a perceived lack of similarities between the institutions. While different aspects of similarity are proposed, the community continuously and irrevocably rejects the notion on the basis of ideological differences between these institutions. The prevalent issue cited in this respect is the fact that European countries voluntarily moved to join the EU, whereas Nazi Germany pursued a violent annexation of parts of Europe. Additionally, the debate on Nazi Germany and its alleged connection to the EU elicits a discussion about the EU’s standing as a democratic or undemocratic institution. The Wikipedia community concludes that the EU is indeed lacking in the sense of not being an entirely democratic institution and states that this ought to be changed. Interestingly, the view that the EU, even though suffering

from a democratic deficit, is the best means to go forward in a globalised world, is expressed and not challenged by the community

In the debate about the impetus of European unification and integration in the form of the EU, the community does not arrive at any conclusions but considers options ranging from an outside force setting the course for the EU to forces from within, i.e. from players that are now part of the EU. The forces working to establish the EU from within are not specified beyond reference to particular institutions or, generally, “countries”.

There is one more element that deserves attention, namely the issue of what is not dealt with, i.e. what is apparently not controversial: the Wikipedia community does not challenge the EU’s official version of its history whatsoever (European Union, 2017). This is indicated, e.g. by the fact that none of the concordance lines of ‘history’ propose alternative versions of the EU’s historical narrative. The expansion of lines five to eight in Table 18 confirms this as these lines are part of threads dedicated to discussing the sequence of the EU’s development, e.g. “ECSC is unquestionably the de facto forerunner of the EU” is not questioned at any point in the corpus.

Indeed, the Wikipedia article mirrors the EU’s historical narrative of the European Union (European Union, 2017). Additionally, the Wikipedia article does not refer to any EU forerunner entities before the ECSC. Thereby, any further potential controversy about the role of Nazi Germany in the development of the EU is avoided in the Wikipedia article.

8 Conclusion

The conclusion of this thesis is divided into three parts. Part one addresses the research questions centred on Wikipedia as an under-researched but undoubtedly rich source of data for future linguistic and, especially, discourse analytical work. The second part deals with the research questions aimed at teasing out the Wikipedia community’s treatment of the European Union, in particular on the Wikipedia talk page that accompanies the article on the institution. Finally, part three presents the limitations of this study and potential future venues of research.