1. Discourses on nations

We will begin at 11:15 CET

Discourses in Europe

Discourses on nations: national stereotypes across centuries

Presenting: Lydia Uriarte Arreba and Raúl Sánchez Prieto, University of Salamanca

Presentation

Possible seminar papers on this topic

0. Debunking nations and names 1. National stereotypes 2. The Image of Countries in Literature 3. Text linguistic opinion mining for detecting and analysing national stereotypes (using the example of Spain) 4. Critical Discourse Analysis and text linguistic opinion mining for historical texts

Presentation

0. Debunking nations and names

Interesting facts about nations and names:

• Germany (Deutschland, Germania, Alemania, Alemanha, Alamannen)
• English, Sasanach, Saxon
• *þiudisk (deutsch, tedesco) - *walhisk (welsch-Welsch)
• Dutch - Holland/Olanda - Low Countries/Paesi Bassi - Nederland/De Lage Landen
• German - nemec - чуждый
• French - Franken
• Spain - Visigothia?
• Rus - Russia - Ruotsi - Vänäjä - Sweden - Svenskarna
• Imperium Romanum - Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων/Ῥωμανία - Romania
• Hispania - Hespanha - Portugal - Porto

1. National stereotypes

For Greenland (2000: 15) stereotypes are “probabalistic, generalised representations of any social group”. Stereotypes play an important role in social cognition. Their effects on perception, thought and behaviour are considerable. Bias and prejudice are an integral part of stereotyping leading to the frequent denigration of ‘others’. The more social groups suffer from anxiety about other groups, the more they will practice negative stereotyping (Berger 2021: 13).

A close analysis of national histories leads to the conclusion that they are often characterised by positive auto-stereotypes and negative stereotypes about ‘others’, which can be both external and internal. Fritzsche (2008): “The relationship between victimhood and violence is embedded in most national historiographies […]. [The national idea, S.B.] is first conjured up as being under threat. And it is this state of alarm that produces the energy to override competing identities, often violently. Violence is inscribed in the national narrative because the nation imagines itself first and foremost as a collective good that is incomplete and imperilled. In many ways, the national narrative must sustain itself by reproducing its own state of jeopardy. National histories tremble as a result.”

Example of Germany after unification of 1871. Internal enemies:

• National histories contributed to constructing a whole string of internal and external enemies in order to strengthen an altogether insecure national ‘we’ group
• Catholics and Socialists were scapegoats of German nationalism
• “Inferioritätsdebatte”: Protestants vs. Catholics (Max Weber)

External enemies:

• France
• England
• Russia and the Slavs

The role of historians and historiography in cementing stereotypes.

2. The Image of Countries in Literature: Learning objectives

• Define “national images” in literature.
• Apply imagology, postcolonial, and cultural memory tools.
• Recognize comparative patterns across European traditions.
• A case study: Günter Grass and Poland.
• Analyze Grass’s portrayal of Poland and its reception/debates.
• Use a practical 6-step protocol for close reading country images.

PART I — THEORY: IMAGOLOGY & MEMORY

• Imagology studies how nations are represented in texts.
• Discursive study of ethnotypes (stereotypical attributions of national character).
• "Imagology, a long established specialism rooted in Comparative Literature, analyses the discursive articulations of such national characterizations; it studies them as a cross-national dynamics and from a transnational point of view" (Leerssen, 2016: 14).
• Focus: discursive images, not “real” national character.
• Key question: How do texts depict Germans, Poles, Spaniards, etc.?
• Output: analyses of auto-images and hetero-images.

PART I — THEORY: IMAGOLOGY & MEMORY

• Imagology is a working method, not in sociology, but in the humanities; the aim is to understand, not a society or social dynamics, but rather a discursive logic and representational set of cultural and poetic conventions (Leerssen, 2016: 19)

Short genealogy

• Roots: “national character” debates; topoi (E. R. Curtius).
• 1960s–70s consolidation: Hugo Dyserinck, Daniel-Henri Pageaux.
• 2007: Beller & Leerssen handbook → field goes international.
• Since: links with cultural memory (Assmann), translation/circulation.

Key concepts I

• Auto-image: a nation’s self-portrait.
• Hetero-/Allo-image: how it imagines others.
• Meta-image: reflection on image-making (“we are seen as…”).
• Cross-image: reciprocal dyads (e.g., German ↔ Polish views).

Key concepts II

• Imageme (Leerssen, 2016): condensed trait bundle (“Nordic gloom”).
• Imagotype (Pageaux, 1988): culturally available model reproduced across genres.
• Repertoire: circulating topoi/stereotypes in a given period.

Threefold procedure (Leerssen, 2016: 20,21)

• Intertextual

• Contextual
• Textual

Threefold procedure (Leerssen, 2016: 20,21): Intertextual

• Intertextual: "Establishing an ethnotype’s intertext means to trace the paper trail of textual occurrences of the commonplace in question".

Threefold procedure (Leerssen, 2016: 20,21): Contextual

• Contextual: "Context refers to the historical, political and social conditions within which a given ethnotype is brought forward".

Threefold procedure (Leerssen, 2016: 20,21): Textual

• Textual: "The textual analysis, finally, will involve the actual study of the text itself to see how the ethnotype functions in it: which genre-conventions rule the text in question (fiction, rapportage, oratory etc.), what position the ethnotype occupies in the text, how foregrounded it is, to which extent it is juxtaposed with other nationalized characters or with an implied self-image or complicit target-audience, whether its presence in the text is heightened, counteracted, ironized or left unaffected by the authorial voice and the overall focalization and textual drift".

Where Images Live (On the Page)

• Voice/focalization (narrator vs. character; insider vs. outsider).
• Registers (epithets, set-piece landscapes, clichés).
• Genres (travel writing, satire, historical novel).
• Intertexts (songs, quotations, proverbial wisdom).

Method: A Practical Protocol

1. Collect passages describing a country/people.
2. Code imagemes + who voices them.
3. Map intertexts (old cliché? parody? twist?).
4. Contextualize (censorship, translation, venue).
5. Compare auto- vs hetero- images.
6. Conclude: reinforce, subvert, or complicate the repertoire?

Pitfalls & Controls

1. Reification: repeating stereotypes as facts.
2. Voice blindness: missing irony/focalization.
3. De-historicizing: ignoring period-specific repertoires.
4. Orientalism: exoticizing others (Said).

THE LONG EUROPEAN ARC (PANORAMA)

• Four Devices that Build Country Images:
• Landscape
• History/Politics
• Culture/Stereotype
• Language/Voice

Romanticism: Inventing National Pictures

• Folklore, medieval past, sublime nature.
• Goethe: Italian Journey (1816) → Italy as classical, sunlit Arcadia.
• Walter Scott: Waverley (1814)→ Highlands romanticized.
• Nation-poets (Mickiewicz, Pushkin, Petőfi) as identity anchors.

Romantic Tropes & Tensions

• North/South contrast (discipline vs. passion).
• The Grand Tour (Italy/Spain as aesthetic cure).
• Folklore archives (Grimm; Kalevala).
• Spain exoticized (Mérimée) vs. internal Spanish Romanticism (Bécquer).

Realism/Naturalism: Social Mirrors

• Dickens: Dickensian London—inequity + humane satire.
• Flaubert: provincial France—precision demystifies.
• Zola: industrial France—labor, revolt, systems.

Russia in the Realist Imagination

• Dostoevsky: spiritual crisis; urban poverty as moral crucible.
• Tolstoy: aristocrats↔peasants; Westernization vs. rural virtue.
• The “Russian soul” as circulating imageme.

Modernism: Nation as Inner Weather

• Fragmentation; interiority; mythic parallels.
• Kafka: bureaucratic labyrinths (Central Europe).
• Joyce/Woolf: Dublin/London as mind-maps after empire/war.

WWI & Shattered Myths

• Trench poetry unmakes martial glory.
• Disillusion becomes a pan-European mood.
• Seeds of dystopia (later Orwell).

Postwar Europe: Memory Work

• Ethics of witnessing; complicity vs. victimhood.
• Literature as unofficial tribunal.
• Germany: Vergangenheitsbewältigung; Spain: writing under Franco - censorship.
• Exile: role of language and space

Contemporary Plurality

• Immigration, diaspora, hybridity.
• Transnationalism: Emine Sevgi Özdamar (Ein von Schatten begrenzter Raum, 2021)

PART III — COMPARATIVE SNAPSHOTS (IMAGES IN ACTION)Shakespeare: France (Hetero-Image)

• Henry V (1599) : French as arrogant; English courage valorized.
• Function: patriotic foil.

Byron: Greece (Admiration & Exoticism)

• Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812): ancient glory vs. degraded present.
• Dual imageme: reverence + orientalist tint.

Conrad: Africa (Projection)

• Heart of Darkness (1899): colonial critique yet exotic mystery lens.
• Continent as projection screen for European fears/fantasies.
• Dual imageme: reverence + orientalist tint.

Mann: Italy (Decadence Imageme)

• Death in Venice (1912): Italy as sensual, aesthetic, dangerous.
• Imageme: decadence as both allure and threat.

Delibes: USA y yo (Spanish Hetero-Image)

• USA y yo (1966): Ambivalent image of the U.S.: modern/efficient/abundant ↔ consumerist/alienating.
• Nonfiction travel writing also manufactures national images.Imageme: decadence as both allure and threat.

Spain via Delibes (Auto-Image, Fiction)

• Castile: austere beauty + social scarcity.
• Las ratas (1962), Cinco horas con Mario (1966)
• Strategy: plain diction; monologue; nature as ethical pressure.
• Counter-image to Francoist rural idyll.

PART IV — GÜNTER GRASS & POLAND

• Danzig/Gdańsk as Microcosm
• City where German, Polish, Kashubian, Jewish cultures overlap.
• Myth + history converge; borders shift, scars remain.

Loss, Expulsion, Writing

• 1945 expulsions; Grass’s family among hundreds of thousands.
• “Obsessive memory” fuels writing (Schallau, 2018: 74)
• Crucial: frames loss within German guilt—painful yet contextualized.

Works & Polish Themes

• Die Blechtrommel (1959): Jan Bronski; Post Office defense episode.
• Katz und Maus (1961): first fully in Polish (1963).
• Later Unkenrufe (1992), Im Krebsgang (2002): memory, cemeteries, ship sinkings.

Kashubians in Grass

• Kashubians are a West Slavic ethnic group native to northern Poland, particularly the Pomerania region near Gdańsk.
• He makes Kashubians visible; also depicts them as fading, land-bound, myth-tied (Preece and Thesz, 2019: 304-305).
• Empowerment vs. stereotyping tension.
• In Poland Kashubian culture and language had been acknowledged grudgingly if at all (Preece & Thesz, 2019: 308)

Reception in Poland: Polemics & Controversy

• Brunon Zwarra (1984): accuses repetition of Nazi stereotypes (Koljaiczek), defamation of Post Office defenders.
• Jan Koprowski (1963, 1971): defends Grass’s depth and “obsession with Poland.”
• Debates show co-production of nation-images by author, readers, critics.

Grass as Mediator

• Later honors in Gdańsk (citizenship, doctorate).
• Unkenrufe (1992) sparks memory debates (cemeteries/heritage).
• Politicians credit him with German-Polish reconciliation.

3. Text linguistic opinion mining for detecting and analysing national stereotypes (using the example of Spain)

National stereotypes, nation branding, social media and text linguistics: an unusual but useful connection Text linguistic and media linguistic approach presented here > practical and straightforward method for the empirical analysis of national stereotyping Main goal  > to provide a working tool for evaluating national stereotypes on social media. Since “l’image de l’Autre est construite à travers un discours où le stéréotype règne en maître glorieux” (Laamiri/Ouasti 2001: 117), national stereotypes are hard to erase and need to be actively opposed.

This is one of the most important reasons countries engage in nation branding. Main objectives of Southern European crisis countries in nation branding: “helping restore international credibility and investor confidence” and “reverse international ratings downgrades” > The cultural dimension of national stereotyping (Blum 2004: 252) and the economic facets of a nation brand are closely related. Most studies on nation branding are conceptual:

• empirical research is limited (Papadopoulos et al. 2016: 459)
• mostly based on sociological description models (v.g. Kohut 2012, a Pew Research Center report on the reputation of European countries)
• Social media research is being incorporated into this sociological approach to nation branding and national stereotyping.

Linguistic studies on national stereotypes not very common (Quasthoff/ Hallsteindóttir 2016: 347) > several research streams (Vilinbahova 2014):

• Semantic and lexicographic stereotype research (see Ossenberg/Baur 2016 for an overview)
• Critical Discourse Analysis: Van Dijk, Wodak, etc.
• Text and media linguistics: very scarce work, v.g. Dąbrowska (1999), PümpelMader (2010).

Social media have been neglected in text linguistic research concerning national stereotyping. In contrast, in Critical Discourse Analysis there is an ongoing discussion on how to approach social media data (Unger/Wodak/KhosraviNik 2016). As social media are the new “digital public sphere” (Valtysson 2012: 77), the empirical analysis of social media conversations is vital for understanding how stereoypes on any particular European nation are built up and spread.

An empirical approach to text linguistic opinion mining for detecting and analysing national stereotypes The proposed approach builds on previous research on text actions (≈ text acts). The description of the actions displayed in online conversations:

• could reveal the textual intentions of the commenting user
• will detect the topics internet users comment on
• will expose how the users characterise a given nation
• will incorporate polarity
• will take the collocational behaviour of terms that refer directly to the nation
• brand into account.

Text actions and sentiment analysis Text actions (or text acts) are the main structuring element in texts (Rothkegel 1992: 675). Rothkegel’s theory of text action (Rothkegel 1993), based on Rehbein (1977), Gülich (1986) and Brandt/Rosengren (1992) is modelled on Speech Act Theory. Text actions “tie together functional, thematic, text-organizing and linguistic aspects” (Rothkegel 1993: 59). Contrary to speech acts and similarly to Dynamic Speech Act Theory (Geis 1995), text acts cannot be associated “with the use of particular linguistic cons-tructions” (Geis 1995: 12) > they are communicative actions that constitute the text’s thematic structure (Rothkegel 1984: 240ff).

There are several theoretical and practical approaches on text acts (Czachur 2000: 66ff for an overview). Our own is based on Von der Lage-Müller’s “Handlungsmodell” (Von der LageMüller 1995: 50ff). Three different hierarchical levels of internal organisation for text actions.

Similar approaches based on Von der Lage-Müller: Schröder (2003), Janich (2005), Golonka (2009), Ortner (2014), Sánchez Prieto (2017). No attempt so far made to link text actions with sentiment analysis. Sentiment analysis “Task of identifying positive or negative opinions, emotions and evaluations” (Stock/Stock 2013: 435). Its main purpose is “to determine the contextual polarity of a given sentiment” (Hollander et al. 2016: 8). Computational linguistics has done most of the research in this respect (see Taboada 2016). Sentiment analysis can also be applied to other linguistic subfields and “polarity” is a common concept in imagology (e.g. Leerssen 2007: 344).

Sentiment analysis will be used to determine the polarity of secondary text actions. This method will allow us:

• to determine the national stereotypes social media users comment o
• to establish the polarity of those comments.

Thus, here national stereotypes will be detected and analysed in conjunction with the text actions they shape and their polarity.

Hoping to find a NLP method for automatically recognizing/classifying text acts. Evaluation of the performance of some speech act classifiers:

• Maximum Entropy Model, best tool, but accuracy 62% (far below Choi 2005)
• Support Vector Machines, accuracy far below Moldovan et al. (2011)
• Naïve Bayes classifiers, accuracy far below Moldovan et al. (2011)
• SentiWordNet, accuracy far below Singh at al. (2013)
• Semantic Orientation Calculator, accuracy far below Taboada (2011)

All insufficient for our descriptive needs.

Hoping to find a NLP method for automatically recognizing/classifying text acts. Evaluation of the performance of some speech act classifiers:

• Maximum Entropy Model, best tool, but accuracy 62% (far below Choi 2005)
• Support Vector Machines, accuracy far below Moldovan et al. (2011)
• Naïve Bayes classifiers, accuracy far below Moldovan et al. (2011)
• SentiWordNet, accuracy far below Singh at al. (2013)
• Semantic Orientation Calculator, accuracy far below Taboada (2011)

All insufficient for our descriptive needs.

These (disappointing) results are consistent with Dashtipour (2016: 768) > the applicability of these tools is limited to the subject domains they were designed for (Moreno Ortiz/Pérez Hernández 2013: 98) and there is not always a clear relation between text act and their morphosyntactic and semantic surface. Our procedure: 1) Corpus breakdown into units of meaning (UoM) by adding sentence boundaries with Python Natural Language Toolkit2) Manual revision and correction of the automatic segmentation3) Categorisation of the UoM into one of the secondary text actions considered4) Determination of polarity.

Collocational behaviour of key words that refer to the nation brand Collocations are understood here as the recurrent co-occurrence of words, i.e., the “tendency for words to occur together repeatedly” (Saeed 2009: 60). The study of collocation patterns is widely used in Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 2003: 131). It may help reveal stereotyping schemes in a text linguistic study but generally large bodies of text are needed for obtaining significant results.

Spain in the eyes of Northern, Southern and Eastern European Facebook users Corpus description Conversations posted on Facebook pages of different newspapers across Europe:

• Search terms: “Spain”, “Spanish” in the respective language
• Period: June to December 2016 (six months).
• Criteria for inclusion in the corpus: comments in Spain-related threads
• published beneath Facebook posts about Spain (no sports and showbiz news).

One right- and one left-leaning newspaper with the highest circulation in each case per country. Circulation figures by the national circulation bureaus.

Text actions in the corpus: results

Assessing Spanish society (1) Spanien sollte lieber die tierquäler bestrafen, die stierkämpfe abschaffen und die toten windhunde von den bäumen schneiden, auf denen die spanischen jäger sie am saisonende aufknüpfen (A-STAND 52) (2) “La giustizia spagnola, peggiore della.nostra, se possibile...... (I-CORRIERE 42) (3) Je trouve que l'Espagne est un pays beaucoup plus tolérant avec l'homosexualité que la France. J'ai vécu à Madrid et personne ne m’a jamais insulté pour embrasser un garçon dans le métro où me balader main dans la main avec lui dans la rue de n'importe quel quartier. JAMAIS. (F-LE MONDE 119) .

Assessing the Spanish economy (4) Ein Land, in dem Arbeitslosigkeit, Schulden und sinkende Löhne einen Linksruck bringt... (A-PRESSE 46) (5) senza governo crescono del 3,5 %. noi con il bomba, pdioti alfano e verdini , 0.00000000000000 periodico (I-REPUBBLICA 331) (6) Le plus grave c'est que la corruption est completement normalisée dans la société espagnole (F-MONDE 636) (7) Hij heeft, en nog, de Spanjaarden uitgemolken en de slechte resultaren zijn er, 22,8 % werklozen, 28,6 % vd bevolking is arm, 50 % vd jongeren hebben geen werk (BE-DM 4) (8) Waar wachten jullie nog op, Brussel en de Vlaamse rand, om net als rond Madrid vier concentrische ringwegen aan te leggen! (BE-STAN 39)

Assessing Spanish politics

(9) De man die Spanje kapotbespaarde, wordt nu de premier van een minderheidsregering... (BE-DM 32) (10) Sie [Die Spanier] sind empört über die Günstlingswirtschaft und Korruption in den beiden großen Volksparteien (A-PRESSE 45) (11) Най-после, някой да го каже на 'ясен български'! (BG-KAPITAL 1) (12) Catalonië onafhankelijk! (BE-DM 4) (13) Debiły! Wszyscy separatyscy są debiłami (PL- RZECZPOSPOLITA 15)

Assessing Spain on other topics

Collocations in the corpus: results

Conclusion and comments on this approach

This part of the presentation is based on Sánchez Prieto (2021). Click on this link to read it. You will also find there the quoted references.

5. Critical Discourse Analysis and text linguistic opinion mining for historical texts

The perception of foreign nations in the past (example: Middle Ages) In the Middle Ages the vision of the Other was determined by territory, religion and language. Characteristics:

• Only manuscripts are available
• Historical languages are a problem
• Difficult interpretation

Study of historical perceptions within the framework of CDA: Perceptions and attitudes are imaginary abstractions that are observable in texts. Attitudes towards other human groups are overt manifestations of an opaque and/or implicit ideology (Fairclough 1995: 132).

Concept "perception (or attitude) of peoples/nations" Adaptation of Baker's (1992: 29) scheme on the different types of existing attitudes:

• Perception of territory: positive autoperception in the case of Spain and the Netherlands. Always negative for non-Western "nationes"
• Perception of Western Christianity: Christians vs. infidels
• Perception of languages

Corpus and research design Starting point: Black Legend. Is there something prior to the Black Legend that explains the success of Hispanophobia in the Netherlands? Corpus

• Spiegel Historiael, a Middle Dutch chronicle from the 13th century.
• Commissioned by Count Florentius V of Holland, a count with ambitions to the Germanic throne

• Lexematic search criterion: "spaen-" and "span-" as radical morphemes.

Critical Discourse Analysis for historical texts in action Authors: Scollon (1998), Van Dijk (2001), Reisigl/Wodak (2001), Jäger (2004). Discourse-Historical Approach: Wodak (2001). Analytical toolkit in three steps: 1) Context determination and contextualization 2) Topical structure 3) Argumentative schemes.

Historical Context and Contextualization of the Passage Exposing at least the following characteristics of each fragment:

• Historical figures that appear in the passage (if any). Their identification is key to the understanding of the fragment.
• Event narrated or referred to in the passage.
• Relationship between the historical figure and the event narrated.

Want een Griec, hiet Macedo, // Wilde up die Drievoudichede Seggen sware ongelovechede, // Ende seide dat al openbare, Dattie Heilege Gheest geen God en ware. // In Spaengen begonste upgaen Een meester, hiet Prissiliaen. Het ware al een, seide die gone, // Vader, Heilech Gheest ende Sone, Een persoen wert ende God. (SH Derde Partie. Van Maximuse ende ander dinc. XXVII, 61)

Topical structure Wodak's principle of sequential analysis (Wodak 2001: 85) + Thematic or topical-actional analysis

Argumentative schemes Based on Argumentative Theory (Walton et al. 2008), not on CDA:

• Argument ad verecundiam.
• Witness testimony argument.
• Argument ad populum.
• Argument ad antiquitatem..
• Argument ad exemplum.
• Argument per analogiam.
• Composition/division argument.
• Argument ad crumenam.
• Ad hominem argument.
• Ethicist argument.
• Need for aid argument.

Steps and operators I

Steps and operators II

Results

• Negative perception of Spain and the Spanish

• The Spanish are characterized as a people only partly Christia
• But the Spanish are Western people

• Spain is wealthy

Why these results? The Holy Empire and the Dutch problably saw the peninsular kingdoms as a possible opponent to the Germanic throne... ....even more so when Portugal, Leon, Castile and Aragon were the only European kingdoms that reconquered territories in a lasting way from Islam, unlike the Central European crusaders.

This part of the presentation is based on Sánchez Prieto (2022). Click on this link to read it. You will also find there the quoted references.

Possible seminar papers on this topic

• Image of a given country in Social Media (i.e. Italy on Twitter / Facebook)
• Image of a given country in a historical text (Italy in Goethe's books)
• Image of a given country in a literary text (Poland in Grass' works e.g. The tin drum)