Wodak Et Al - Struggle As Metaphor in European Union Discourse On Unemployment PDF

A RT I C L E 67
Struggle as metaphor in European

Union discourses on unemployment
Discourse & Society

Copyright © 1999
SAGE Publications
(London,
Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi)
C A R O L Y N S T R A E H L E , G I L B E R T W E I S S , RU T H Vol 10(1): 67–99
[0957-9265
W O DA K , P E T E R M U N T I G L A N D M A R I A S E D L A K (199901) 10:1;
U N I V E R S I T Y O F V I E N NA 67–99; 006474]
A B S T R A C T.
This study looks at how, over a period of several years,
unemployment in two genres (speeches and Presidency Conclusions)
generated in organizations of the European Union (EU) is
constructed both as a ‘problem’ and a ‘fight’ and how these
formulations can be viewed as closely connected under an
overarching metaphor of ‘struggle’. A synthesis of discourse analytic
and cognitive-semantic analyses, this article begins by demonstrating
how struggle is invoked and then proceeds to decompose the notion
into several categories, using statistical analysis to show their
distribution. Ultimately, it is demonstrated that the differences
between the two genres are connected to their respective purposes
and target audiences, with Presidency Conclusions examples of
internal organizational discourse and commissioners’ speeches as
external organizational discourse. The similarities between the two
genres reflect the functions of the struggle metaphor in EU discourses
of unemployment in general, the ways in which its dimensions serve
various legitimizing functions in these genres’ capacity as political
discourse, and the connection between discourses on unemployment
and the prevailing EU economic philosophy.
K E Y W O R D S : European Union (EU), metaphor, organizational discourse,

political discourse, unemployment
It is in light of this that I have taken the initiative of calling for an improved dialogue
at all levels about unemployment. I have called it a Confidence Pact . . . The purpose is
to focus on how the Union can stimulate actions in the fight against unemployment.
(Jacques Santer, 11 April 1996)
The European Council considers that the level of unemployment is unacceptable and
that the fight for employment must remain the top priority for the Union and its
Member States. (Presidency Conclusions, 21–22 June 1996)
68 Discourse & Society 10(1)
1. Introduction
Recent work in political discourse analysis (Chilton, 1996; Chilton and Ilyin,
1993; Wilson, 1990) underscores the centrality of metaphor in political com-
munication in general and examines the kinds and functions of metaphors used
in different political texts. With respect to the functions of metaphor in political
discourse, Wilson (1990: 104), for example, notes that it ‘can assist in the expla-
nation of complex political arguments’ and be used affectively and strategically
by ‘arousing emotions and reinforcing particular purposes’. Chilton (1996; see
also Chilton and Ilyin, 1993), who examines the different uses of the metaphors
‘common European house’ and ‘European security architecture’ in Germany,
France, and the (former) Soviet Union during the late 1980s and early 1990s,
argues that metaphor in political discourse is most critical when ‘a coherent
policy discourse is developed’ (1996: 71). Further, it can serve a variety of pur-
poses, including persuasion, legitimation, group solidarity, and the production of
‘new conceptualizations for problematic situations’ (Chilton, 1996: 74).
Interactively, metaphors in political and diplomatic contexts may be used to
‘create common ground’ and to help individuals ‘avoid direct reference to a
tabooed or threatening subject’ (Chilton, 1996: 71); finally, once established,
metaphors may be reformulated, adapted, and otherwise discursively negotiated.
Sociologically oriented studies argue—like Lakoff and Johnson (1980) from
the linguistic perspective—that metaphors are used to construct and reflect the
social world (Böke, 1997; Kurz, 1993; Münkler, 1994). That is, metaphors ‘may
define the nature of the situation, the respective roles of the key actors and the
proper procedures or even outcomes to be followed/attained’ (Dunford and
Palmer, 1996: 96). Metaphors implement certain interpretations of situations by
excluding others. They ‘provide a central role in defining action as legitimate,
necessary, maybe even as the only “realistic” opinion for a given situation’
(Dunford and Palmer, 1996: 97). In terms of organizational decision-making and
political discourse, using metaphor to manage meaning is an expression of power
through which reality is defined for others. Metaphorizing can take place at dif-
ferent levels: it can be limited to defining very specific situations, tools or goals of
actions; or it can be expanded to a definition embracing the whole of a particular
reality in question.
A relatively recent—and often controversial—policy-making area in the
European Union (EU) today concerns addressing what is widely reported in the
media to be the EU’s most critical social issue: the unemployment of 18 million or
more of its citizens. Since the Treaty of the European Union (1992), EU
integration has focused largely on the economic and currency union, central in
shaping the policy-making of the various Member States. Unlike fiscal and
currency matters, employment in the Maastricht Treaty (1992) was not an
operationalized policy goal; employment figures (or unemployment rates) did not
constitute a convergence criterium, and EU-wide coordination of employment
matters was largely lacking.
Straehle et al.: Struggle as metaphor in EU discourses 69
Although employment and labor policy today still remains to a large extent the
responsibility of the individual Member States according to the EU-doctrine of
subsidiarity,1 in part because of the rising unemployment figures, pressure from
labour unions, advocacy groups and the like, as well as political agitation among
the unemployed themselves (e.g. in France during 1997 and 1998), various steps
have been taken in the direction of a common, or supranational, EU policy on
employment. In recent years the most significant documents and events marking
this trend have been the Commission’s White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and
Employment (Commission of the European Communities, 1993) under Jacques
Delors, predecessor to Jacques Santer as President of the Commission; the
Presidency Conclusions of the European Council meeting in Essen (1994);2
the Confidence Pact on Employment in Europe by Jacques Santer (Commission of
the European Union, 1996); and the employment section in the Treaty of
Amsterdam (Council of the European Union, 1997). As a follow-up to
Amsterdam, in November 1997 the European Council met in Luxembourg for an
extraordinary meeting—the so-called Employment Summit—devoted exclusively
to the issue of unemployment.
Employment, then, is increasingly drawing the interest of EU policy-makers,
even at the supranational level. Assuming that claims by Chilton (1996) and
Dunford and Palmer (1996) are correct—namely that metaphor in political dis-
course is particularly critical when a ‘a coherent policy discourse is [being] devel-
oped’ (Chilton, 1996: 71) and that metaphors ‘may define the nature of the
situation . . .’ (Dunford & Palmer, 1996: 96)—we would expect discourse on the
topic of unemployment at the supranational level of the EU to draw on metaphor
in its discursive construction of unemployment. Furthermore, we might expect
the metaphor or metaphors figuring dominantly in the discourse to say something
about the kind of reality EU policy-makers wish us (intentionally or not) to see.
This largely qualitative study offers a look at one of the many potential
metaphors drawn upon in political discourse. Specifically, we focus on ‘struggle’
as an overarching metaphor frequently invoked in Presidency Conclusions of the
EU and in speeches by EU Commissioners. We do not wish to be misinterpreted
here. Numerous metaphors can be found at work in a discourse at any one time.
However, some metaphors reveal themselves to be more prominent than others,
and where this is the case, it is important to consider the nature of these particu-
lar metaphor(s), the contexts (including genres) in which they appear, and what
they contribute to the discourse at hand.
After providing the reader with background on the genres studied and their
organizational contexts in section 2, we proceed with qualitative and quantitative
analyses in sections 3 and 4. Section 3 lays the ground work, defining metaphor
and showing how unemployment in two genres constructed as ‘problem’ and
‘fight’ can be interpreted as closely related under the metaphor of struggle,
whereas section 4 offers a ‘decomposition’ and more detailed look at this very
notion, including a statistical analysis of our results. Our analyses are followed by
a closing discussion in section 5.
2. Background: European Council and European Commission

data
The research presented in this article is based on an analysis of two main types of
EU organizational discourse:3 six Presidency Conclusions of the European
Council (ranging from Essen 1994 to Amsterdam 1997) and three speeches by
two EU Commissioners, Jacques Santer, current Commission President, and
Pádraig Flynn, responsible for Directorate-General V (Employment, Industrial
Relations and Social Affairs).4
Formally, the European Council is not an EU body like the European
Commission, Parliament, or Council of Ministers; instead, it consists of the heads
of state or government of the Member States (and their foreign ministers) who
convene twice annually for summits (occasionally more often), where they are
joined by the President of the Commission and other representatives of the vari-
ous EU organizations. The European Council does not deal with ‘everyday’ poli-
tics, but focuses instead on what may be referred to as the ‘dispositif idéel’
(Godelier, 1984, cited in Abélès et al., 1993: 5), i.e. the general political direction
to be taken in the EU. For example, in the case of unemployment the European
Council may propose the guidelines and general criteria for employment policy to
be further developed and implemented by various EU entities and the individual
Member States (who interpret them in light of their individual circumstances).
After each of these meetings, the respective Presidency of the Council5
generates Presidency Conclusions, reports summarizing the outcomes of a particu-
lar meeting. Because unemployment has been an issue receiving growing atten-
tion at European Council summits in recent years, the Presidency Conclusions
have also regularly included sections on this topic. Moreover, since the European
Council is perceived as guiding EU policy-making in general (Taulègne, 1993),
those statements devoted to (un)employment in the Presidency Conclusions are
important for understanding the direction of EU employment policy in general.
While the European Council has been interpreted as the EU’s guiding force, the
European Commission (EC) acts as the executive and administrative branch of the
EU and, in general, it is seen as the European supranational organization. It is
often perceived as the organ that most represents the ideal of a unified Europe and
as the ‘motor’ of further and deeper integration. The EC consists of 20 mem-
bers—called commissioners—each of whom is responsible for certain fields (e.g.
Internal Market, External Relations, Environment, Employment, etc.) and pre-
sides over one or more Directions Generals similar to national ministries. The EC
is also the main EU ‘author’ in that it drafts—in addition to reports of various
kinds—Proposals for the Council of Ministers and European Parliament and pro-
duces Opinions on the Council of Ministers’ Common Positions or the Parliament’s
Amendments (Edwards and Spence, 1997). The work of the EC Commissioners
reflects the ‘author’ role of the EC in that they are regularly called upon to func-
tion as the ‘voice’ of the Commission on various issues. Thus, speeches by
President Santer and Commissioner Flynn are of interest to us because these indi-
viduals regularly act as spokespersons in presenting developments in employ-

ment policy to EU audiences and the wider public.
While the Commissioner speeches and Presidency Conclusions alone are
clearly not representative of the variety of discourse genres (both written and
spoken) produced in the EU political system on the topic of unemployment, they
are prominent among the texts regularly created and accessible to the public.6
They are typical for both the European Council and the EC and are suitable for
present purposes and for generating hypotheses to be investigated in the future.
3. Metaphor
In the following sections, we demonstrate that a metaphor of struggle is
repeatedly invoked in conjunction with (un)employment in both the speeches
and Presidency Conclusions. Kurz (1993) argues that there are certain basic
metaphors that are regularly used in political rhetoric: organism, family, and ship.
This does not mean, however, that the range of metaphors used in political dis-
course is limited to these three. For instance, Böke (1997), in her examination of
immigration discourse occurring in the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel
between 1947 and 1988, found a large array of metaphors. Immigration dis-
course, she argues, predominantly employs water, war, and commodity
metaphors, but others, such as nature (catastrophe), fire, thermostat, plant, body,
sickness, animal, house, etc., were also found. While health/body (e.g. unemploy-
ment is Europe’s Achilles Heel) and nature/catastrophe (e.g. the scourge of unem-
ployment) metaphors are among those commonly invoked in the data we analyse,
‘struggle’, which we define shortly, is curiously prominent.
Like other social scientists studying metaphor in political discourse, we draw on
work by cognitive linguists Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and use metaphor in the
sense of a conceptual system in which one kind of thing is understood and experi-
enced in terms of another. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) demonstrate a number of
such conceptual systems, including that argument may be conceived of as war, a
journey, or a container. By using the conceptual metaphor ‘argument is war’, for
instance, Lakoff and Johnson note that a speaker’s discourse involves attacking,
counter-attacking, defence, etc. An ‘argument as a journey’ metaphor, on the
other hand, involves paths and surfaces. One of the main points that Lakoff and
Johnson (1980: 4) make in light of such examples is that the conceptual systems
invoked by metaphors in essence ‘structure how we perceive, how we think, and
what we do’.
When we speak of ‘struggle’, we take it to mean the coming together of com-
peting positions, in this case, the EU (or any one of the EU organizational bodies,
Europe, Member States) on one hand and unemployment on the other hand. In
other words, the struggle metaphor entails the idea of a division and/or confron-
tation between different ‘positions’ and is expressed in varying degrees of
abstractness. It is critical to note, however, that while we show how the data we
studied draw on a struggle metaphor, we are not saying that the word ‘struggle’
appears as a descriptor for (un)employment; rather, the way in which

(un)employment is constructed and acted upon in the texts relies on a conceptual
system or metaphor based on the notion of ‘struggle’. Mangham (1996: 27) in his
discussion of a journey applied to organizations notes that ‘it is important to bear
in mind that metaphor is not simply a matter of what is said’, it ‘is not any par-
ticular word or expression’ that constitutes the metaphor, ‘although the words
and expressions allow us to infer its presence’.
3.1 STRUGGLE METAPHOR

In this section, we demonstrate how in our data a conceptual system of ‘struggle’
is actually set up as an overarching metaphor entailing the notions of problem and
fight. Essentially, we see that over a 4-year period, the idea ‘Europe—struggles
with/against/for—(un)employment’ appears consistently in the sections devoted
to (un)employment in the presidency conclusion texts and that a connected for-
mulation reappears in the political speeches by Santer and Flynn. Of particular
interest are the semantic relations existing between the clausal ‘actors’ and
‘actions’ in each of these sentences.
3.1.1 Unemployment ⫽ problem ⫽ concern ⫽ top priority ⫽ (to) fight. Halliday

(1994: 344) in a discussion of grammatical metaphor notes that clauses such as
‘Mary saw something wonderful’, ‘Mary came upon a wonderful sight’, or ‘A won-
derful sight met Mary’s eyes’ ‘are all plausible representations of one and the
same non-linguistic ‘state of affairs’. He observes that ‘They are definitely not
synonymous . . . [b]ut they are potentially co-representational, and in that respect
form a set of metaphoric variants of an ideational kind’ (1994: 344). Halliday’s
examples illustrate how a core idea, i.e. ‘state of affairs’, can remain stable despite
variation in its linguistic realization. Thus, while in the first two examples ‘Mary’
is the perceiving or acting entity (i.e. Mary saw; Mary came upon), in the third
example, the sentential ‘doer’ is the personified ‘wonderful sight’ (‘A wonderful
sight met . . .’). Despite this change in grammatical relations, the kernel message
contained in these clauses remains the same: ‘Mary saw’. While we do not intend
here to present a Hallidayan, Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) analysis of our
data, the idea of co-representationality is critical to understanding how the data
we examined invokes a struggle metaphor. In the following exegesis we show how,
over time, a core idea is repeated from Presidency Conclusion to Presidency Con-
clusion and between the Presidency Conclusions and the speeches (thus creating
intertextual links among the texts), altogether framing unemployment in terms
of struggle.
Beginning with the Presidency Conclusions, let us consider the way in which
the idea ‘Europe—struggles with/against/for—(un)employment’ is embodied in
the components ‘Europe—fights—unemployment’ in each of the texts studied.
(Note that with the Presidency Conclusions we focus on the relatively concrete
expression of struggle as ‘fight’, while in the speeches we consider a more abstract
expression of struggle as ‘problem’. Later in this section we demonstrate specifi-
cally how the relationship between ‘problem’ and ‘fight’ can be expressed
through the concept of struggle.) Excerpts from the paragraphs in which the sen-
tences appear are listed in chronological order in the following example, and the
sentences being considered have been underlined in each text segment. Also indi-
cated is the position that the sentence focused upon occupies in the paragraph.
Example 1
December 1994
First sentence: The fight against unemployment and [sic] equality of opportunity for men
and women will continue in the future to remain the paramount tasks of the European
Union and its Member States. The current economic recovery will help in dealing with
these tasks . . .
June 1995
Third sentence: Despite the resumption of economic growth, the unemployment rate will
remain unacceptably high in 1995. It is therefore of the utmost importance that, in line
with the five guidelines set out in Essen, Member States should press ahead with structural
reforms . . . The fight against unemployment and equal opportunity questions will remain
the most important task facing the EU and its Member States. The European Council calls
on the Member States to give effect to those efforts . . .
December 1995
First sentence/paragraph: The European Commission reaffirms that the fight against
unemployment and for equal opportunities is the priority task of the EU and its Member
States.
June 1996
First sentence/paragraph: The European Commission considers that the level of unem-
ployment is unacceptable and that the fight for employment must remain the top priority
for the Union and its Member States.
December 1996
First sentence: The fight against unemployment is the prime responsibility of the Member
States but also a priority task of the Union. The European Council had an in-depth dis-
cussion on the growth and employment strategy, based on the joint report from the
Council and the Commission on employment . . .
June 1997
First sentence: In order to maintain momentum in fostering economic growth and fight-
ing unemployment an extraordinary meeting of the European Council under Luxembourg
Presidency will review progress in the implementation of, among others, the initiatives
concerning job creating potentials for small and medium-sized enterprises . . .
Particularly noteworthy in these Presidency Conclusions data is that the sen-

tences communicating the idea of ‘fighting unemployment’ commonly appear in
the initial position of the first paragraph of the section devoted to (un)employ-
ment. This is not to say that the notion ‘fighting unemployment’ appears only in
this position, but that it is invoked consistently in these first paragraphs. Moreover,
in almost all of the initial paragraphs in which the concept appears, it does so as
part of a topic or thesis sentence of that paragraph. In other words, the sentences
containing the idea ‘fighting unemployment’ almost always function to make the
main rhetorical point of a paragraph, which the remaining text supports. In
December 1995 and June 1996, in fact, they are the only sentences in the initial
paragraphs of the respective employment sections. Finally, because ‘fighting

unemployment’ is so prominent in the first paragraph of the sections devoted to
unemployment, it sets up a type of frame or ‘lens’ through which to view the rest
of the section. Thus, alone the position and function of the sentence signal the
possibility of interpreting unemployment as an enemy, as something to be fought.
Looking more closely at the main components of the thesis sentences (i.e. sub-
ject and object noun phrases, verb phrase, complement), we find the following
pattern, summarized in Table 1, with examples ordered chronologically as
previously.
Notable here is the fact that the idea of the EU and the Member States fighting
unemployment is repeated without exception and with only slight variation (i.e.
fight for employment) in the first five Presidency Conclusions analysed. Only in the
last set of Presidency Conclusions considered, June 1997, does the sentence
structure vary considerably from the others examined, so that fighting unemploy-
ment appears as part of a verbal complement rather than in the subject position
noun phrase. However, despite this change in grammatical position, the fight con-
cept remains present.
Looking more closely at the sentences appearing in the Presidency Conclusions
from December 1994 to December 1996 in Table 1, we see that in each of them
the expression fight against unemployment appears together with explicit mention
of the notion of importance, i.e. the paramount task, the top priority, the prime
TA B L E 1 . ‘Fight’ in Presidency Conclusions
Verbal/
Noun phrase Noun phrase prepositional
Date (subject) Verb phrase (object) complement
December The fight against Will . . . remain The paramount Of the EU and its
1994 unemployment . . . tasks Member States
June The fight against Will . . .remain The most Facing the EU and
1995 unemployment and . . . important tasks its Member States
December The fight against Is The priority task Of the EU and its
1995 unemployment . . . Member States
June The fight for Must remain The top priority For the Union and
1996 employment its Member States
December The fight against Is The prime Of the Member
1996 unemployment responsibility . . . States . . .
a priority task of the Union
June . . . an extraordinary Will review Progress . . .to maintain
1997 meeting of the momentum in . . .
European Council . . . fighting
unemployment . . .
responsibility, etc. In each case, the verb binding the two noun phrases is a stative
one, either a form of to be or remain, such that fight against unemployment is pre-
sented as roughly equivalent to paramount task (and its variations). In other
words, these discursive constructions underscore the significance of the fight.
Another point of interest is the fact that in most of the examples, fight appears
in a nominalized, rather than verbal form, yet the idea communicated is nonethe-
less that unemployment must be combated. Through the nominalization, the
actors who carry out the fight are not foregrounded in the subject position, but
appear primarily in prepositional/complement phrases, as in of the EU and its
Member States. However, the ‘state of affairs’ being represented in these formu-
lations is the same in each case: these topic sentences are co-representational;
that is, they represent the ideas that the EU must (is) fight(ing) unemployment
and that this fight is considered important. As Dunford and Palmer (1996) have
demonstrated, use of physical metaphors of this sort is not untypical for organiz-
ational discourse in general or for discourse in political organizations in particu-
lar: ‘Firm action is necessary, this being portrayed through imagery with strong
military overtones [. . .]. It is time to “declare war” ’ (Dunford and Palmer, 1996:
99). Hence, the importance of the fight against unemployment is emphasized, and
legitimation of the struggle is achieved by arguing that fighting is a prime
responsibility and a priority task.
To summarize our discussion of the sentences highlighted in Example 1 earlier,
we conclude that a war-like metaphor is introduced at the beginning of the sec-
tions devoted to (un)employment in the presidency documents and serves as a
type of frame for interpreting both the issue at hand and the relevant actions
involved. The fact that this metaphor is recontextualized7 in the thesis statement
of the employment section in the Presidency Conclusions over a period of time (in
our data, from December 1994 to June 1997), suggests it is an especially import-
ant metaphor in this particular genre’s contribution to the discourse of unem-
ployment. That it extends into the speeches as well is further evidence for its
significance.
Now taking an even more micro-perspective, let us highlight just one of the
Presidency Conclusions texts quoted and focus on the ‘state of affairs’ rep-
resented in each of the sentences it contains by considering who is (to be) respon-
sible for an action (to be) performed and the nature and recipient(s) of that action.
In the following example we demonstrate how the semantic relations among the
clauses in the discourse chunk pattern to create the metaphorical message
‘Europe—fights—unemployment’. The excerpt is first reproduced in full, then
each sentence is listed and numbered separately, and finally a step-by-step
analysis of a portion of the text, followed by an overall sketch of the semantic
components of the whole excerpt is offered.
Example 2
Presidency Conclusions, December 1994:
The fight against unemployment and [sic] equality of opportunity for men and women will
continue in the future to remain the paramount tasks of the European Union and its
Member States. The current economic recovery will help in dealing with these tasks. That
recovery is not, however, in itself sufficient to solve the problems of employment and
unemployment in Europe. We shall therefore have to make further efforts to solve the
structural problems. In this process an important role will be played by dialogue between
social partners and politicians in which everyone concerned will have to assume their
responsibilities fully.
1. The fight against unemployment and equality of opportunity for men and women will
continue in the future to remain the paramount tasks of the EU and its Member States.
2. The current economic recovery will help in dealing with these tasks.
3. That recovery is not, however, in itself sufficient to solve the problems of employment
and unemployment in Europe.
4. We shall therefore have to make further efforts to solve the structural problems.
5. In this process an important role will be played by dialogue between social partners and
politicians in which everyone concerned will have to assume their responsibilities fully.
‘Unpacking’ each of the sentences in this discourse chunk reveals several pat-
terns which strengthen the fight aspect of the struggle metaphor. One caveat is in
order here: we are aware that the quoted sentences are considerably more com-
plex than our reduction in the following tabular and prose form would indicate.
This is particularly true of sentence 5, where we essentially focus only on that
portion of the sentence that is relevant to unemployment, despite the fact that the
sentence involves several layers of embedding. Bearing this in mind, we propose
the following analysis, which begins by walking the reader through a step-by-step
‘unpacking’ of the first sentence and then proceeding to discuss the remainder of
the passage.
Essentially, our first aim is to get at the ideational core (Halliday, 1994) of what
is being communicated in the text, that is what is happening, what is being
experienced. To unpack the first sentence, we begin by removing the tense, leav-
ing the idea ‘fight against unemployment and equality . . . to remain the para-
mount tasks of the EU and its Member States’. Since the verb remain essentially
denotes to continue to be we can relabel the verb as a form of to be.
The fight against unemployment and [sic]equality of opportunity for men and
Women will continue in the future to remain the paramount tasks of the
(are)
European Union and its Member States.
Next, we remove the modulation (i.e. according to Halliday, 1994; Martin et al.,
1997; and others in SFL the degree of obligation communicated; ‘mustness’
according to Iedema, 1997b).8 Here, modulation is lexicalized as the paramount
tasks, in other words, we are dealing with ‘x is paramount task of y’ (‘fight . . . is
paramount task of EU . . .’). By reversing the x and y and unlexicalizing the phrase
the paramount tasks, we are left with the reformulation ‘y must (absolutely) x’, or
‘EU . . . must (absolutely) fight . . .’. Removing the modulation altogether, we
uncover the ideational core of the sentence:
The European Union and its Member States fight against unemployment and [sic] equality
of opportunity . . .
Proceeding in this way, each portion of the discourse chunk can be interpreted
for its ideational content. Once each of the sentences is individually analysed, we
are ready for the second part of our analysis, which considers how the sentences
are connected semantically and referentially. The entire analysis is summarized in
Table 2 and is the point of reference for the remaining discussion concerning
Example 2.
As already mentioned, the ‘fight’ is itself set up in the first line of the text, and
much of the following text can be interpreted as somehow related to this fight.
One set of links involves the action and its complement fight against unemployment
and [sic] equality ↔ deal with these tasks ↔ solve problems of employment and unem-
ployment ↔ solve structural problems . While these phrases are clearly not entirely
synonymous, their components are semantically linked.
Beginning with the action elements (verbs), we find: fight against ↔ deal with
↔ solve ↔ solve. Here solving and dealing with are synonymous and are
co-representational with fight against. Referential and semantic links connect the
remaining components of these phrases as well: these tasks in line 2 and in this
process in line 5 refer back to (fight against) unemployment and [sic] equality; next,
problems of unemployment is essentially a synonym of unemployment; and one
could argue that structural problems and unemployment/problems of unemployment
are related hyponymically, i.e. that unemployment/the problems of unemployment
entails structural problems.
If we consider who is ultimately (to be) engaged in solving, dealing with or
fighting against unemployment, we find that the We in sentence 4 appears to be
TA B L E 2 . Ideational content and semantic/referential relations in Presidency Conclusions
Line Who/what acts Action Complement
1 EU/Member fight (against)

States unemployment
2 Economic recovery (will help) deal
with these tasks
3 Recovery (not . . . sufficient) to solve) problems of
employment and
unemployment
4 We (make efforts to) solve structural
problems
5 Social partners [participate in]
and politicians dialogue in this process*
Everyone assume
responsibility
(in the dialogue)
* Interpreted here as co-referential with the preceding actions/complements.

co-representational with the European Union and Member States appearing in line
1 of the text. Politicians and social partners can also be seen as quasi-hyponyms of
the European Union and Member States since politicians make up a substantial por-
tion of the individuals in the machinery of the EU and social partners are crucial
actors involved in employment policy-making at both the supranational level (e.g.
The European Federation of Trade Unions) and that of the Member States. Finally,
Everyone in sentence 5 can be viewed as synonymous with social partners and poli-
ticians, although its referent, like that in the case of We in sentence 4, is somewhat
vague and could also be interpreted as extending to all the potential actors in the
EU and Member States. In sum, once the idea that unemployment is something to
be fought and combated is introduced in the first sentence, subsequent connected
terms (whether semantically or referentially) can be interpreted from this
perspective. In other words, terms that are more or less co-representational or co-
referential, are likely to be viewed through the same metaphoric lens.
Having established the way in which the relatively concrete, i.e. ‘fight’ aspect of
the struggle metaphor is manifest in the Presidency Conclusions, let us see their
connections with the speeches by Santer and Flynn. Here we present an excerpt
from a speech by Commission President Santer in April 1996:
Example 3
Nobody will argue that unemployment is not a problem in Europe today. But is it also a
problem for Europe, in the sense of being a problem for the European Union? This is a very
legitimate question. Jobs are not created by Brussels. They are the result of mostly national
demand and supply conditions. It is mainly national policies which impinge on these con-
ditions. Yet, I see some reasons why the need to fight unemployment has gradually become
a case for common concern of European leaders. Job creation has even been declared the
top priority at the European Summit in Madrid, last December. Three reasons for European
concern stand out: . . .
1. Nobody will argue that unemployment is not a problem in Europe today.
2. But is it also a problem for Europe, in the sense of being a problem for the EU?
3. This is a very legitimate question.
4. Jobs are not created by Brussels.
5. They are the result of mostly national demand-and supply-conditions.
6. It is mainly national policies which impinge on these conditions.
7. Yet, I see some reasons why the need to fight unemployment has gradually become a
case for common concern of European leaders.
8. Job creation has even been declared the top priority at the European Summit in Madrid,
last December.
9. Three reasons for European concern stand out: . . .
On the basis of the sketch of sentences 1–5, 7, 8, presented in Table 3 (sen-

tences 6 and 9 are omitted because they are not essential to our analysis; note,
again, the caveat: of interest to our analysis are those clauses most directly con-
nected to unemployment), we show how the semantic and referential chains
reveal the basic message: unemployment is a problem/concern, and fighting unem-
ployment/job creation is [therefore] the top priority for the EU and Member States.
Moreover, this analysis makes the connection between unemployment as a prob-
TA B L E 3 . Semantic/referential relations in Santer text
Verbal/
Verb prepositional Passive
Line Noun phrase (subject) phrase complements subject
1 Unemployment is a problem in Europe

2 (it) is a problem for Europe
(being) a problem for the EU
3 This (is) (a question)
4 Jobs not created by Brussels
5 They (are) (the result of . . .)
7 (need to) fight has become a case for of
unemployment common concern European
leaders
8 Job creation has . . . been the top priority (at the
declared European
Summit)
lem and as something to be fought explicit and exhibits links—or intertextual-

ity—between the speeches and the Presidency Conclusions. Like Table 1, Table 3
focuses on the main components—subject noun phrase, verb, and verbal/prepo-
sitional complements (objects)—of the sentences highlighted.
Beginning with lines 1and 2, we see that unemployment is repeatedly cast as a
problem and that the ones who (will have to) deal with this problem are Europe/the
EU. Note here that the terms Europe and EU are semantically linked, i.e. poten-
tially co-referential, albeit in this context not identical. The contrast between
Europe the geographic entity stretching to the Urals and Europe encompassing
the economic and political entity the EU is signalled linguistically both by the con-
trast (But . . .) set up by Santer in sentence 2 and the switch in pronouns (in
Europe → for Europe). Semantically, however, the EU is in essence a hyponym of
Europe the geographic entity, which obviously encompasses the EU’s 15 Member
States. The EU here more specifically refers to the Union at the supranational
level, which is referenced again in the synonyms Brussels and European leaders.
Despite these differences among the terms, their similarity should not be over-
looked, namely, that ultimately they (Europe, EU, Brussels, European leaders) all
end up having to do the same thing: fight unemployment.
Sentence 3 also establishes a link between the first two sentences and the fol-
lowing three in that this anaphorically references the entire idea unemployment ⫽
a problem for Europe/EU and provides a link to the idea of job creation raised in
sentence 4. In other words, job creation is a real world solution to unemployment,
and, in the broadest sense, sets up type of semantic opposition to unemployment:
whereas unemployment entails the characteristic [⫺ jobs], job creation incorporates
[⫹ jobs]. The idea of job creation is repeated as jobs . . . (not) created in sentence 4,
and they in sentence 5 once again refers to jobs. In sentence 7, unemployment
appears again, this time collocated with fight in the phrase the need to fight unem-
ployment. Moving to sentence 8, we see that the idea fighting unemployment has
become co-referential with job creation. Observe, too, that the unemployment (as)
problem which was repeated in sentences 1 and 2 is semantically connected to
fighting unemployment as a case for common concern. This concern, in turn, is
viewed as a top priority, an idea actually immanent early in line 7 in the modu-
lated expression the need to fight . . . Finally, the most common verb forms here,
similar to those in Table 1, are largely stative (forms of to be, to become), setting up
several relations of (near) equivalence: unemployment ⫽ problem; need to fight
unemployment ⫽ (case for common) concern; even has been declared, although
arguably a material (active) verbal process, implies a more or less equivalent
relation between job creation and top priority.
Thus, in this text we see several key semantic and referential chains linking the
ideas unemployment ⫽ problem ⫽ (a case for common) concern ⫽ top priority ⫽ (to)
fight. Unemployment is repeatedly constructed as a problem, and being a prob-
lem, it gives rise to great worry or concern; because of the great concern raised
by unemployment, dealing with this worry becomes a paramount task or top
priority for various actors in the EU. Job creation, the solution to unemployment,
can only be achieved if, joining the Member States (who still hold primary
responsibility), the EU at the supranational level is willing/able to engage in
battle: the fight against unemployment.
One last example in this section shows how clearly the discursive construction
of unemployment in the Presidency Conclusions is linked to the speeches. Here,
in Example 4, we show how sentences 7 and 8 from the previous excerpt tie
directly to the topic sentence of the employment section in the Presidency
Conclusions of December 1994:
Example 4
7. . . . the need to fight unemployment has . . . become a . . . common concern of European
leaders. Job creation has . . . been declared the top priority at the European Summit . . .
(Santer)
8. The fight against unemployment . . . will continue . . . to remain the paramount task(s)
of the European Union and its Member States. (Presidency Conclusions)
Indeed, these elements—unemployment problem/fight unemployment/job

creation—top priority—Europe/Member States—which combine to form the
message that fighting the problem of unemployment is a priority for the EU, are
carried, in slightly transposed form, from one text to another in the data we
analyse. In other words, a key idea is recontextualized from text to text, binding
the texts in a unified discourse, and functioning to shape the way in which the
texts are interpreted.
3.1.2 Struggle as overarching metaphor in unemployment discourse. What we have

seen in the analysis so far is that unemployment constructed as a problem caus-
ing concern and unemployment constructed as a fight are closely linked. One way
to describe this connection is in terms of an overarching metaphor of struggle.

The notion of struggle can be seen as a cline ranging from relatively abstract and
mental to more physical and concrete. In this sense, we can imagine ‘problem’ as
a kind of struggle because it leads to worry and concern as well as attempts to find
solutions. On the other end of the scale, we can envision struggle as relatively
physical and concrete, like a fight. Building on the preliminary definition we
introduced in Section 3; we conclude this section by adding that the term ‘strug-
gle’ encompasses a continuum of senses ranging from the weighing of ideas,
options, and solutions one engages in while concerned with a problem to the
physical exchange of blows (Figure 1).
4. Struggling with, against (using tools), and for

(un)employment
In this section we present a more detailed analysis and show how the struggle
metaphor, as defined in the previous section, appears in the Presidency
Conclusions and speeches selected for this study. Although a discourse analytic
perspective provides the larger framework for our research and the basis for the
preceding analysis, the data were also analysed qualitatively according to cogni-
tive-semantic and pragmatic methods. This means that all utterances referring to
employment, unemployment, and jobs in the data, while also studied in their
larger textual context as in the preceding section, were culled from the texts and
organized according to cognitive–semantic categories. These categories are
inductive, that is, they did not exist as slots in a pre-determined framework, but
grew out of our working extensively with the data.9
Through this analytic process, four categories of struggle emerged as particu-
larly salient for the way in which unemployment is constructed. First, the
metaphor casts agents as engaging in a struggle with a difficult matter (e.g. a
problem) and as seeking ways of solving that difficulty; second, the metaphor
appears in the sense of struggling with an undesirable condition that requires
alteration or manipulation of some kind; third, struggle is referenced as a battle
in which a competing position is struggled against; and fourth, the struggle is
legitimized through an articulation of the goals of the struggle and the parties
whom the struggle ultimately benefits, that is, what or whom is being struggled
for. This last aspect of struggle differs from the other three in that the emphasis is
STRUGGLE
Problem Fight
(issue, situation, (battle, combat,
etc.) etc.)
≈ more mental image ≈ more physical image
FIGURE 1 . Struggle as overarching metaphor

not on a struggle with a problem or against an opponent but on the (potentially)

beneficial outcomes of the struggle.
Three linguistic representations correspond to the four categories of struggle:
struggling with, against, and for something or someone. When unemployment is
constructed as an abstract concept or problem, or as an objectified ‘thing’ to be
manipulated or altered, we can think of it as being struggled with. When unem-
ployment is struggled against, it is an abstract concept personified into an acting
entity. In other words, although the term unemployment itself refers to an
abstract concept—it is a crisis, problem, situation, objective, topic, etc.—through
the struggle metaphor, it is also often discursively constructed as more than an
abstraction, as an object or agent. In the data, the struggle metaphor can be best
seen in the descriptions of the efforts exerted to address unemployment. It should
be noted, however, that these distinctions are not always entirely clear, and some
examples are ambiguous with regard to the degree to which unemployment has
been objectified or personified. In this sense they invoke a mid-range of the
metaphor of struggle—neither entirely abstract, nor wholly concrete, nor wholly
personified.
The last aspect of struggle—which chiefly addresses the consequences of and
the reasons for (i.e. legitimization of ) the struggle—is embodied in the linguistic
realization of a struggle for something or someone. The outcome of the struggle
in the area of unemployment is the creation of jobs. Hence, one struggles for
employment. But struggles are also used to aid or liberate individuals or peoples.
Discourses on the Gulf War serve as an example here. While Americans in the
Gulf War were struggling against their opponent Iraq, at the same time they also
claimed to be struggling for the Kuwaiti people in order to ‘liberate’ them from the
‘enemy’, Iraq. In the discourse on unemployment, it is therefore not only jobs but
also the unemployed who are being struggled for.
4.1 STRUGGLING WITH : ABSTRACT PROBLEM

If we begin with struggle in its most abstract sense, where (un)employment is
constructed as a problem, we find that (un)employment is frequently embedded
in the noun phrase employment problem:
Example 5
• Europe’s employment problems are primarily the result of errors of past economic man-
agement. (Flynn, Amsterdam conference, January 1997)
Important here is that nominalizing (un)employment as Europe’s problem in

this way treats it as given information. It need no longer be questioned whether
(un)employment is a problem; this is simply taken for granted. According to
Iedema (personal communication), this type of formulation is common in
bureaucratic, organizational discourse.
Not surprisingly, the actions of solving, addressing, dealing with, or finding a way
out of also tend to co-occur with (un)employment presented as a problem:
Example 6
• Solving the employment problem has become the essential motor force of the Union
(Flynn, February 1996)
Example 7
• If Europe is to find a way out of its employment problem, we need to be sure that Europe is
addressing these issues. (Flynn, February 1996)
Here, too, specifically in Example 7, it is Europe that is portrayed as being

actively involved in the struggle with unemployment in that it is presented as
addressing the problem or attempting to find a way out of it. In other instances
found in our data (but not shown here), groups such as we, the European Union,
Countries (Europe’s) citizens, the European Union or the (European) Community
(including policy-makers and European leaders) are among those typically refer-
enced. This last example also introduced another metaphor, albeit one that is sub-
sidiary to the larger metaphor of struggle that is developed in the data. Here, a
conduit metaphor (finding a way out of ) is invoked through which unemploy-
ment is viewed as a container. The way to solve the problem is to discover how to
get out of the troublesome trap that has ensnared, in this case, Europe.
4.2 STRUGGLING WITH : OBJECT

As we move to the next dimension of the struggle metaphor, we see that
(un)employment is constructed as more thing-like than abstract. To borrow ter-
minology from SFL (e.g. Halliday, 1994, Iedema, 1997a, 1997b), unemployment
is often cast as the goal (the recipient) in a material process (of a concrete action).
As such, this makes it possible to talk about altering or gaining advantage over
unemployment in some way. Material processes such as improve, contribute, and
develop are frequently used in connection with unemployment, as in the following
examples:
Example 8
• There must be further determined efforts to improve competitiveness and the employment
situation . . . (Essen European Council, December 1994)
Example 9
• Although modestly and mainly in an indirect way, the Union can contribute to employ-
ment through the continued effort to create a genuine Internal Market. (Santer,
Copenhagen conference, April 1996)
Verbs such as improving, contributing, and developing ultimately imply that by

changing an aspect of unemployment, advantage is gained in the struggle with it;
in other words, unemployment is in the process of being resolved. Put simply, if
competitiveness is improved, efforts continued, and approaches developed, the
chances of diminishing or ending the confrontation with unemployment are
increased.
What is left unsaid, however, is what specific consequences these actions have.
For instance, what does it mean to improve the (un)employment situation? Is the
main concern one of assuaging the unemployed or creating a new model of
work? Since there always will be unemployed, at what point does it become a
problem? Numbers, percentages, rates, and levels of unemployed seem to play a
critical role here. That is, the ‘problem’ of unemployment is mainly perceived
quantitatively—change the numbers and you’ve solved the problem. More specifi-
cally, unemployment can be increased or reduced: by raising employment, unem-
ployment is decreased. Describing unemployment in this way, as a quantity,
objectifies it. Unemployment now becomes a number that can be manipulated in
the struggle with it.
Whereas quantitative concepts appear in both text genres analysed, specific
numbers and percentages are only mentioned in the speeches (we return to the
possible significance of this difference in the Discussion). The following examples
highlight the quantification phenomenon, which is expressed in verbs such as
reduce, roll[ing] back, gett[ing] down, keep low, increase, raise, boost, improve[d] levels,
stimulate, promote, enhance, foster, create, generate, build, and also derives from the
concept of unemployment as an object to be manipulated.
Example 10
• The European Council reaffirms the importance it attaches to promoting employment and
reducing the unacceptably high levels of unemployment in Europe, particularly for young
people, the long-term unemployed and the low-skilled. (Amsterdam European Council,
June 1997)
Example 11
• This is a strategy which is intended to foster growth, employment and convergence in the
Member State economies. (Flynn, February 1996)
This struggle over numbers, percentages, and rates has direct consequences for
the degree to which unemployment can be overcome: if employment levels are
increased or if unemployment levels are reduced to a specific level, those dealing
with unemployment may be perceived as having ‘won’ the struggle. The object
quality of unemployment is clearly manifest in descriptions of it being reduced or
promoted; similar examples including (un)employment as being rolled back,
increased, raised, and boosted. Notice also in some of the examples, however, that
unemployment has taken on some agentive or ‘living’ qualities. Inert matter
cannot be stimulated or fostered, only living entities can. The implication of using
such terms is that employment is potentially capable of doing something, of
acting in some way.
4.3 STRUGGLING AGAINST : AGENT / ENEMY

Thus far in our discussion of how speakers and writers address unemployment,
we have emphasized examples that draw on the relatively more abstract—some-
times objectified but, for the most part, unpersonified—images associated with
the struggle metaphor. Earlier, however, we also indicated that in a struggle,
abstract concepts may assume agent-like qualities; in other words, unemploy-
ment becomes an entity, an ‘enemy’ to be ‘eliminated’. Many such examples draw
on verb forms such as fight against, combat, tackle, face[d] up to, overcome, position.
Here we highlight three of them:
Example 12
• As a result, the hard won gains in the fight against unemployment are melting like ice in
the sun. (Santer, Copenhagen conference, April 1996)
Example 13
• Investment promotion also has a role to play in combating unemployment. (Cannes
European Council, June 1995)
Example 14
• 1995 was an important year, one in which Europe clearly showed that it was facing up to
its employment problems. (Flynn, February 1996)
Examples 12 and 13 demonstrate how unemployment may be categorized not

merely as a problem, or a condition/state, but as an entity that potentially acts, in
that it is an enemy to be fought against or combated. Also in keeping with a more
physical and potentially personified interpretation of confrontation entailed in
the struggle metaphor, the spatial arrangements of the opponents are critical. In
example 14 this is seen in the description face up to. The confrontation is moreover
also often depicted as difficult and complex. In example 12, for instance, the fight
is described as arduous (hard won gains) and winning as ephemeral (melting like ice
in the sun). Unemployment is thus depicted as a tenacious opponent who is not
easily vanquished.
4.4 STRUGGLING AGAINST, USING TOOLS : AGENT / ENEMY

In struggling against something, one often seeks help in the form of ‘tools’ (which
in keeping with a battle sense of struggle, actually function as the ‘weapons’ used
in the fight). The data reveal that the tools relied upon in the struggle against
unemployment often appear as different types of strategies, including policies, ini-
tiatives, pacts, procedures, and measures:
Example 15
• The European Council welcomes the positive reaction to the initiatives on territorial
employment pacts . . . (Dublin European Council, December 1996)
Example 16
• . . . this the new European employment strategy is designed to deliver. (Flynn, February
1996)
The strategies, initiatives, etc. are objectified as tools used to battle against an
opponent. These tools are generally described with respect to how they can gain
advantage and affect the (un)employment scales. Tools thus help to ‘win’ the
struggle. Note that most of the tools appearing in the examples fit in well with a
war-like interpretation of struggle. In this image of struggle, one can well imagine
the different ‘fronts’ involved in the fight as developing war policy and implement-
ing it in the form of pacts10 with ‘allies’ and specific strategies and measures taken
against the ‘enemy’.
Another sort of tool used to ‘fight’ unemployment involves sizing up or scruti-
nizing one’s opponent and one’s own activities. In a physical battle, both your
moves and your opponent’s must be monitored11 and examined so that you may
retain the advantage. Typical in our data are expressions such as keep close track
of, monitor, examine, verify, as exemplified by the following two excerpts:
Example 17
• . . . the Labour and Social Affairs and Economic and Financial Councils and the
Commission to keep close track of employment trends . . . (Essen European Council,
December 1994)
Example 18
• . . . the Essen instruction on monitoring employment . . . (Madrid European Council,
December 1995)
These sorts of action allow one to watch over the course of the struggle and
inform all the relevant parties of the progress (or lack thereof ) of the ‘battle’.
More important to note about the kinds of tools used in the struggle against
unemployment is that while nouns like strategies and initiatives or verbs such as
monitor, examine and keep track of may appear to a reader or audience to be con-
crete political interventions, upon closer consideration it is clear that they are
actually relatively abstract. Drawing on terminology from SFL once more,
although these activities seem like material processes (i.e. concrete actions), they
are, in fact, largely mental processes. This phenomenon, like the nominalization
mentioned in reference to example 5, is, according to Iedema (personal com-
munication; see also Iedema, 1997a, 1997b), not unusual for organizational (or
bureaucratic) discourse. We consider this phenomenon in somewhat greater
detail in our Discussion (Section 5).
4.5 STRUGGLING FOR : SOMETHING OR SOMEONE

Examples falling into our last category—where struggling occurs for something
or someone—include forms such as fight for or take practical action in favour of
something:
Example 19
• The European Council considers that the level of unemployment is unacceptable and
that the fight for employment must remain the top priority for the Union and its MS
[Member States]. (Florence European Council, June 1996)
Example 20
• The institution of the EU, governments and regional and local authorities, and the social
partners must all take practical action in favour of . . . employment . . . (Florence European
Council, June 1996)
In these examples, the capital that is being struggled for is employment or jobs.
Here, employment is again objectified and talked about as a commodity. Notice
that the struggle for employment is closely connected to and in some ways springs
from the struggle with an objectified unemployment (i.e. level of unemployment).
That is, if unemployment levels are struggled with by raising, improving, or
promoting them, employment, in turn, will also be affected. The struggle with
unemployment, therefore entails a struggling for employment.
The group for whom the struggle occurs, however, is ostensibly the unem-
ployed. Notice, however, that the unemployed themselves are, to a large extent
excluded grammatically from the struggle. Neither in the speeches nor in the
Presidency Conclusions, does active participation of the unemployed in the
struggle seem to be of importance. Instead, their actions are restricted to seeking
employment, life-long learning and adapting to technological changes. As such,
they seem to play a largely passive role in the discourse of unemployment (see
Sedlak, 1997, for related discussion). In keeping with this image of a passive but
‘affected’ group of individuals, the long-term unemployed, low-skilled workers,
young people, women and older employees are described as particularly hard ‘hit’
by unemployment:
Example 21
• Improving measures to help groups which are particularly hard hit by unemployment:
Special attention should be paid to the difficult situation of unemployed women and
older employees. (Essen European Council, December 1994)
In example 21, although in the passive subject position, unemployment is the

ultimate doer, the entity that ‘hits’ the unemployed hard and places them in a dif-
ficult situation.
However, it is not only those currently unemployed who are being fought for.
The fight is undertaken for those whose employment may be threatened in the
future as well:
Example 22
As many people as possible must receive initial and further training . . . in order to reduce
the risk of losing their employment. (Essen European Council, December 1994)
What is not mentioned, however, is precisely who these people at risk are. It is
most likely not the case, as the above statement seems to imply, that all people
need additional training in order to remain employed. Instead of focusing on who
is at risk and what type of training is needed to minimize this risk, this statement
reinvokes unemployment as a pernicious enemy, a potential threat to everyone.
4.6 SPEECHES AND PRESIDENCY CONCLUSIONS COMPARED

In the preceding section, examples from the Presidency Conclusions and the
speeches from Flynn and Santer have been presented to illustrate the various lin-
guistic realizations of the struggle metaphor used in describing unemployment.
Although both genres make extensive use of the same metaphor, one may expect
differences in how the struggle is discursively constructed. That is, various aspects
of the struggle—with, against, and for—are anticipated to be emphasized in one
text genre more than in another. Our claim, then, is that depending on text func-
tion—aspects of inside directed text vs outside directed texts, etc.—various sub-
categories of the struggle metaphor should be produced in greater frequency
depending on the type of text examined. To investigate this claim, we compared
the number and percentage of examples from each genre falling into each
metaphoric subcategory and subjected them to a Pearson chi-square test. All of
the categorical differences between the genres proved to be highly significant (χ2
4 . Dimensions of struggle metaphor in EU Presidency Conclusions and speeches: Struggle

TA B L E
metaphor cross-tabulation
Presidency Conclusions Speeches Totals
Percentage Percentage Percentage

Count within text Count within text Count within text
With abstract problem 003 001.65 19 024.05 022 008.43

With object 014 007.69 20 025.32 034 013.03
Against agent 013 007.14 13 016.46 026 009.96
Against using tools 070 038.46 14 017.72 084 032.18
(strategies)
Against using tools 010 005.49 00 000 010 003.83
(monitoring)
For something/someone 072 039.56 13 016.46 085 032.57
Totals 182 100 79 100 261 100
Note. The totals that do not add up to 100% reflect the fact that the percentages were rounded
to the nearest 100th.
⫽ 71.464, d.f. ⫽ 5, p ⫽ 5.078⫺14). The distribution of categories is shown in

Table 4.
Here we see two clustering patterns, with the first three categories of the strug-
gle metaphor (struggle with an abstract, an object, or against an agent) more char-
acteristic of the speeches and the last three (struggle against using tools, or
monitoring, or for something/someone) more prominent in the Presidency
Conclusions. Why should the categories cluster in this way? Why use a struggle
metaphor at all?
5. Discussion
We propose that the differences and similarities between the two genres may be
explained, first, by considering the respective purposes and target audiences of
the two genres. The Presidency Conclusions are inwardly oriented texts whose
primary audience consists of the various EU and national organization—
Commission, Parliament, Council, Social Partners, Member State governments—
all of them involved, in one way or another, in the EU policy-making process. In
contrast, the speeches take place at events held outside of this organizational
system and address a specific outside-public. In this respect, while the Presidency
Conclusions are examples of internal discourse, the Commissioners’ speeches we
analysed are examples of external discourse.12 Second, we suggest that the simi-
larities between the two genres reflect the functions of the struggle metaphor in
the EU discourse on unemployment in general, the ways in which its dimensions
serve various legitimizing functions, and the connection between discourses on
unemployment and the prevailing EU economic philosophy.
Beginning with the differences between the two genres, and focusing our
attention on the Presidency Conclusions of the European Council, we see that
their primary function is to give instructions and directives to politicians, officials,
and diplomats, that is, to representatives of the various organizations and gov-
ernments. In texts written to guide and instruct, it does not seem surprising that
the foe-like characteristics of an opponent (i.e. the personification of unemploy-
ment) are minimally emphasized. Instead, the texts legitimate the European
Council’s guiding and advisory role by providing direction and goals for the devel-
opment of employment policy and demonstrating how the EU organizations may
participate together in their roles as unemployment troubleshooters; further,
because the various EU organizations are addressed as the ones to carry out
European Council proposals, their roles, like that of the European Council itself,
are also legitimated.
The instructions presented by the European Council have to be relatively con-
crete, of course, in order to make the various organizational actors involved act in
a certain way; yet this ‘concreteness’ is of a particular kind: it does not refer
directly to solutions to unemployment, but primarily to the tools of employment
policy itself: strategies such as reports, pacts, and plans, and monitoring, whether
through observing, examining, or otherwise. Thus the Presidency Conclusions
give instructions for organizational activities, not for actions that in and of them-
selves actually solve unemployment. (We return to this idea of ‘actions’ later).
Nevertheless, instructions have a purpose in that they clarify who is to be doing
what. Moreover, by frequently iterating what and, less so, whom13 is to be strug-
gled for (e.g. jobs, employment), this discourse orients the various EU organiz-
ations being addressed towards particular objectives and goals. Clear
goal-orientation is needed both to legitimate the particular policy-making process
at hand (i.e. employment policy) and—on a much more abstract level—to legit-
imize the existence of the EU as a political union, as the ‘dispositif idéel’ (Godelier,
1984, cited in Abélès et al., 1993: 5) of a common Europe. If unemployment
today is perceived as Europe’s most pressing social issue, then the legitimacy of
the EU as a political union must rest in part on its ability to resolve this problem.
In contrast to the Presidency Conclusions where emphasis is on particular tools
and goals, in the speeches unemployment is foremost constructed as a problem
and presented in terms of levels or numbers to be changed and manipulated; in
addition, in these texts unemployment is frequently depicted as more agent-like
and dynamically constructed as an enemy in a way that is not atypical for
speeches given by politicians (see, for example, Atkinson, 1984). In other words,
it appears that a critical role played by the speeches in the data we analyse is to
define and provide evidence for what is considered important, i.e. what is a valid
political topic, in the EU.
Note, however, that the speeches we studied do not address EU policy-makers
but rather aim to present EU policy-making to the wider (outside) public. In these
speeches, therefore, another overall guiding principle in addition to specifying
what is political is the self-presentation and image promotion of EU policy-
making organizations to EU citizens. The public addressed by such speeches, of

course, can differ: it may consist of experts (from various fields such as the
sciences, economics, non-governmental organizations, etc.) or special groups of
citizens like students, entrepreneurs, workers, etc. Since EU policy-makers in
Brussels are frequently perceived as being alienated or ‘distant’ from EU citizens
and their ‘real’ problems (‘Bürgerferne’), the outwards-oriented discourse of the
speeches tries to present the EU organizations as close to its citizens, their prob-
lems and interests; or, to use a common slogan from such discourse, the EU with
its various organizations is not a bureaucratic construction but represents a
‘Europe for citizens’. One strategy for presenting such an image is to show soli-
darity. By giving the impression that the problem of unemployment affects not
only those individuals who are unemployed but us, the European citizens, and
Europe as well, the speakers demonstrate that we—politicians, bureaucrats and
(‘ordinary’) citizens—are all in the same boat.
In organizational theory this phenomenon is called a ‘Konsensfiktion’ (fictional
consensus). In the context of EU discourse on unemployment, Konsensfiktion can
be used as a vehicle of argumentation to bridge the gap between the EU organiz-
ations on the one hand and citizens on the other hand: citizens consequently look
like active participants in EU politics and, conversely, politicians and bureaucrats
turn out to be, first and foremost, ordinary citizens. In this sense, one can also
interpret the reference in our data to we/us, Europe, and European citizens as actors
in the struggle as functioning as a tool of identity construction. Focusing on
‘we/us/Europe’ strengthens the European dimension of the unemployment issue,
and is therefore an argument for the necessity of a supranational organization
like the EU. In other words, if unemployment affects everyone, why not centralize
and coordinate the efforts made to address the issue? This is of critical importance
when one considers that the legal competency for employment policy-making
still lies largely with the individual Member States. Furthermore, the construction
of an undivided ‘we’ also helps to shift responsibility away from the individual;
the individual politician ‘disappears’ in the collective and no longer bears direct
responsibility. Since European political integration is still a rather fragile process,
drawing on ‘we/us/Europe’ serves discursively to overcome potentially problem-
atic differences: first, it bridges the gap between EU policy-makers in Brussels and
‘ordinary’ EU citizens and, second, it minimizes the differences among various
national positions (or interests and policies; see Muntigl, 1997, for related
discussion.)
Despite the differences the two genres reveal with respect to the way in which
the various dimensions of the struggle metaphor cluster together, it is interesting
that the discourse on unemployment as represented in both sets of texts relies on
the same general metaphor. As noted in section 3, the struggle metaphor is a con-
ceptual system based on the idea of a division and/or confrontation between dif-
ferent positions. Struggling therefore necessarily means confronting something
or somebody, whether in the form of a problem, a personified ‘enemy’, or other-
wise. Note that if there is more than one person struggling with somebody/some-
thing, one can speak of a common opponent: in these data, unemployment. In

turn, facing a common enemy strengthens the bonds and solidarity of those who
do join forces. This happens in the speeches as well as in the Presidency
Conclusions. While in the speeches the relationship between politicians and citi-
zens is accentuated, in the Presidency Conclusions the internal bonds between
the different EU organizations (European Council, European Commission,
Council of Ministers, European Parliament) are strengthened. This underscoring
of bonds among the EU organizations also reflects the need for the EU to legiti-
mate its existence as a supranational political union.
This sort of strategy of creating the image of a common enemy (Feindbild) is, of
course, not new, but a well-known feature of political rhetoric that goes hand in
hand with the construction of a certain view of the world (Weltbild). Formally
speaking, this world-view—which is recursive and finds its driving force in the
metaphor of struggle—is built along the lines of a good we and a bad they or it. The
image of a common enemy feeds the division between we and they/it and this div-
ision, in turn, works to strengthen the Feindbild.
Our analysis suggests that struggle may ultimately serve as a type of ‘absolute
metaphor’, to vary a theme from philosopher Hans Blumenberg (1998).
Blumenberg views absolute metaphors as serving two basic purposes, the first
(‘Totalisierungsfunktion’) proposing that absolute metaphors help create a total
view of reality, or a ‘Weltbild’, and the second (‘Orientierungsfunktion’), suggesting
that such metaphors contribute to specific orientation (or behavioural) patterns
for the individuals/organizations/etc. involved. For the Presidency Conclusions,
what is most important is the orientation of the different EU organizations to the
particular policy-making actions to be taken (strategies and monitoring) and the
purpose for such undertakings. The signal is the following: there is tremendous
pressure from citizens, the media, etc. to ‘fight’ unemployment; we, as EU policy-
makers must therefore act, and we do so by developing various tools or ‘weapons’
(e.g. developing policies) to ‘combat’ the problem. In the case of the speeches, cit-
izens addressed by the talks are to orient themselves to (1) the problem of unem-
ployment in general; (2) the fact that unemployment is a common European
problem; (3) that it is a common European problem demanding common action;
and (4) that it is a political problem that can be solved together with EU policy-
makers. The orientation function of the struggle metaphor ultimately also
articulates with the legitimation functions of both genres to underscore the
necessity of EU organizations and their coordination and policy-making efforts
on a supranational level. In a sense, then, we find here illustration of Chilton’s
(1996) reference to metaphors in political contexts as ‘creat[(e)ing] common
ground’, as being critically necessary when ‘a coherent policy discourse is devel-
oped’ (1996: 71), and as serving a number of purposes, including legitimation,
group solidarity, and persuasion.
In our discussion thus far, we have focused on why the dimensions of the con-
ceptual system of struggle cluster as they do in our data and why struggle appears
to be such a prominent metaphor in this discourse. At this point, we would like to
raise several ideas and questions that are related to the content of much of the dis-
course in our data, especially the ‘tools’ or ‘weapons’ used in the struggle against
unemployment. While not directly under investigation in the foregoing analysis,
in the course of our study we found preliminary discursive evidence to support
the proposition that policy-making in the area of unemployment is strongly influ-
enced by the neoliberal conception of the market as a self-regulating force and, as
such, an area in which political intervention should be limited. Recall examples
such as: the emphasis is on the need to foster growth of a kind that will create
jobs/which generates more employment. It is necessary to improve competitiveness and
the employment situation. Other instances include sentences like Rolling back unem-
ployment means implementing stability-oriented monetary and budgetary policies, in
line with the broad guidelines for economic policies, and so on. Such utterances sug-
gest that employment policy reveals itself as a by-product of economic policy, and
employment as a by-product of growth and competitiveness. As a case in point, it
does not appear incidental that in the title of the White Paper one finds the
elements Growth, Competitiveness and Employment listed in precisely this order.
Indeed, for neoliberals growth is the decisive economic indicator not only for a
‘healthy’ economy but also for a stable employment situation. The negative cor-
relation between growth and unemployment, i.e. more growth leads to less
unemployment, can be interpreted as some neoliberal law14—at least in the past.
In the late 1990s, this law no longer appears to hold as European economies
increasingly face the phenomenon of ‘jobless growth’. This means that although
economies are constantly growing (and this applies to the EU economy as a whole
as well as to the economies of most Member States), unemployment is not
decreasing; on the contrary, it is growing more rapidly than ever before in the
post-war era.
From our data, we conjecture—and this is a proposition to be taken up in
future research—that the economic policy referred to in the discourse of unem-
ployment is largely a passive policy, which would be in keeping with the neoliberal
principle of minimizing political interventions in the market, i.e. as interpreting
the market as an independent, self-regulating and problem-solving force. This
view is further suggested in our data by discursive constructions such as the
essential role of the internal market in promoting growth and employment in the Union.
This formulation personifies an abstract economic concept; critically, it portrays
the market as an active participant in the struggle. Where the market is promoting
and generating growth, competitiveness and employment, the market is the real
doer, not the state or the political organizations involved. The latter are limited to
roles as facilitators or stimulators of the market. Utterances of this sort reflect the
neoliberal principle of ‘letting the market work (do)’ as it was (re)conceptualized
by economists like Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, and has predomi-
nated the economic discourse for the past 20 years especially in the Anglo-
American world but more recently also in Europe.15
We propose, therefore, that EU employment policy can be understood as evolv-
ing out of the following two sets of tensions: on the one hand, the distribution of
legal competencies between the Union and individual Member States and, on the
other hand, the opposing economic forces of Neoliberalism vs Keynesianism.
Given this state of affairs, we are left with a paradox: political measures against
unemployment, despite being constructed in ‘active’ terms (i.e. the EU must take
up the ‘fight’ against unemployment), must be embedded in economic actions,
which, in the sense of market regulation, are reduced to a minimum, that is, are
largely ‘passive’.
With this idea of keeping political intervention into the market to a minimum,
consider that the actual measures reported in the Presidency Conclusions (i.e. the
‘tools’ or ‘weapons’ in the struggle) largely consist of abstract-conceptual activi-
ties (monitoring, reporting, examining, verifying, etc.), not specific political inter-
ventions like employment programmes, regulation of the tax systems or interest
rates, etc. In other words, these texts refer to activities of thinking much more
than to activities of doing (or, in SFL terms, the texts refer to mental more than
material processes). Against the background of the role of the European Council
as the initiator of policy ‘guidelines’, this finding is not surprising; it is equally
unsurprising in light of the economic-ideological background outlined here:
employment policy is not an autonomous field of actions, but is strongly con-
nected to economic policy, an economic policy that specifically rejects active gov-
ernment management of the market. Thus, vagueness and abstraction with
regard to the specificity of employment policy can be explained partly in terms of
the European Council’s guiding role in the EU administrative apparatus.
According to Iedema (1997b: Lecture 9: p. 3), ‘the field of administration is con-
cerned with specifying what ought to be done (Guidance), with checking whether
what ought to be done is done (Surveillance), and with encouraging or forcing
social actors to comply with what ought to be done (Compliance)’; at the same
time, such policy formulations appear strongly connected to the dominant neo-
liberal conception of passive government management but a highly ‘active’
market; finally, the type of discursive constructions we find in our data may be
also attributed to the fact that labor and employment policy-making in the EU lies
in a somewhat vaguely defined space between EU and Member State competen-
cies: as noted, the EU capacity to take legal action in this field on a supranational
level is very limited.
The ideas outlined here, in particular the specific nature of the relationship
between economic discourse in general and the discourse of unemployment in
particular, e.g. in terms of intertextuality and recontextualization, are prelimi-
nary, of course, and demand further detailed study.
In closing, we return to Blumenberg’s (1998) insights that absolute metaphors
serve to totalize world views and construct certain orientations, and our claim
that struggle may function as an ‘absolute metaphor’ in the EU discourse on
unemployment. This line of thinking may be extended to posit that behind the
neoliberal concept of the self-regulating market, and the conceptual system of
struggle, lies yet another, more-encompassing world view: economism.
Let us begin by considering the parallels between economism and evolutionism
in totalizing reality with the imagery of struggle. For evolutionism the ‘struggle
for being’ (Kampf ums Dasein) or ‘survival of the fittest’ is the general organizing
principle of human life; economism has adapted this idea and reframed it in terms
of competition and rivalry. From the perspective of economism, society exists as a
site for permanent competition and struggle, a place where individuals only ‘sur-
vive’ if they internalize the struggling. According to such a world-view, the forces
guiding society are not co-operation and solidarity, but competition and rivalry,
such that the individual ability to act becomes synonymous with competitiveness.
If we interpret economism as a dominating world-view and a potential influence
on EU employment policy development, we see how some technical terms in cer-
tain discursive constructions referred to in this discourse index precisely this per-
spective. For example, the term ‘employability’ in this context ultimately means
the competitiveness of individuals in the labor market. Job-seekers compete with
everyone else, and only the strongest survive. Evolutionism is not new, but in its
economistic frame—as economism—it gains a modernized and universalized
form that appears to be more widely embracing than ever before.
Against this background, we would like to speculate that the discourse on
unemployment is strongly linked to economic discourses in general, and these
discourses are framed by an economistic world-view that not only determines
what is an ‘appropriate’ interpretation of the economic aspects of human life, but
constructs this reality as one that is largely economic. Like all isms, then,
economism excludes deviating perspectives. The world becomes a market that
regulates itself through permanent struggle and competition.Yet economism and
capitalism are not an inevitable destiny or fate, however much our study provides
initial evidence that economic and employment discourses may (re)produce this
assumption. Global markets are not metaphysical phenomena. The shape they
assume still depends critically on active political decisions—perhaps no longer at
the level of nation states, but definitely at supranational levels like the EU. To form
and transform the economic status quo, the EU needs visionary concepts, organ-
izational competencies, and a certain political capacity to act. Of course, that
these factors are essential to effective policy-making is not new either, but they
may end up hidden to policy-makers overly absorbed in struggling.
NOTES
1. ‘Subsidiarity is the principle that decisions should be taken at the lowest level consis-
tent with effective action within a political system’ (Bainbridge and Teasdale, 1995:
430).
2. European Council, Meeting on 9 and 10 December 1994 in Essen, Presidency
Conclusions. SN 300/94.
3. We will handle the distinction between organization and institution in considerable
detail in a future paper; for present purposes we follow Rehberg (1994: 56) in defin-
ing ‘institution’ as the ‘social regulations’ in which the principles, rules and claims to
validity (Geltungsansprüche) of a specific social order are expressed. Organizations, in
contrast, are the social formations into which institutions are embodied, i.e. organiz-
ations materialize institutions. It follows that organizational discourse refers to the

written texts produced by organizations, in our study, those produced in EU organiz-
ations on the topic of unemployment.
4. The Presidency Conclusions studied comprise the following: Essen European Council
on 9–10 December 1994; Cannes European Council on 26–27 June 1995; Madrid
European Council on 15–16 December 1995; Florence European Council on 21–22
June 1996; Dublin European Council on 13–14 December 1996; and Amsterdam
European Council on 17–18 June 1997. The conclusions of the summit in Turin in
spring 1996 are not included in the analysis, as this was an exceptional meeting. In
reference to the speeches, Flynn held one at a meeting at the Centre for European
Policy Studies, Brussels on 5 February 1996 (‘Can Europe really hope to solve its
employment problem?’) and another at the conference for Social Policy and Economic
Performance on 23 January 1997 in Amsterdam. Santer’s speech was given at the
conference on Economic and Political Perspectives on 11 April 1996 in Copenhagen
(‘The economic and political challenges facing Europe’). Note that we analysed the
English versions of each of these texts. It would be interesting, in future, to investigate
whether the construction of particular metaphors holds across the various language
editions of the same text.
5. One Member State at a time holds both the Presidency of the European Council and
Presidency of the Council of Ministers for a 6-month period, after which the positions
are rotated to another Member State.
6. Each Member State has Commission and other organizational representations that
serve in part as EU information/document distribution centers; further, the EU has an
extensive internet system through which many documents such as the ones men-
tioned here are available.
7. For discussions on recontextualization see, for example, Bernstein, 1996; Iedema.
1997a; Van Leeuwen, 1993; and Van Leeuwen and Wodak, in press. Although re-
contextualization with respect to the discourse of unemployment is far beyond the
parameters of this paper, this issue will be addressed in future research undertaken by
the Research Centre Discourse, Politics, Identity.
8. In this article, we borrow, where relevant, insights and terminology from SFL in order
to highlight aspects of particular examples. In general, however, the analysis in this
article was not carried out by using an SFL approach, and it should not be viewed as
such. Future analyses of selected portions of the data collected for the Discourses of
Unemployment Project being carried out by the Research Centre Discourse, Politics,
Identity are planned.
9. Note that the examples in this section include those referring to both unemployment
and employment. Although unemployment and employment are not identical
issues—e.g. unemployment may be viewed as the result of poor economic perform-
ance, whereas employment (and jobs) may be viewed as a solution to unemployment
(or as strategies/opportunities)—a strong relationship exists between them. In order
to decrease the unemployment rate, for example, employment/jobs must be created
for the unemployed. For the present analysis, therefore, we take unemployment and
employment (or jobs) to be essentially co-representational.
10. A prime example is Santer’s Confidence Pact, mentioned in the introduction.
11. However, note that in the absence of a legally binding supranational policy on employ-
ment, the EU supranational organizations have little power to exert other than ‘moni-
toring’ the relative progress of Member States.
12. This distinction is not as clearcut as it might seem at first glance. Although the
speeches address a specific public (mainly scientific and economic experts) whom we
can assume to possess some knowledge of politics and economics, they (the speeches)
refer to information that only people who have some inside knowledge of the EU
organizational system are fully able to understand. Background or insider knowledge
is also necessary for understanding the Presidency Conclusions. Put another way, if
you do not know who wrote which text on a certain topic at what time, or which con-
ferences took place and what decisions were made there, the Presidency Conclusions
remain largely incomprehensible. Since, as noted already, they are directed to the
various EU organizations themselves, this is not surprising. Nevertheless, the
Presidency Conclusions are presented at a press conference after each meeting of the
European Council and are accessible to the public via internet. In other words, instead
of differentiating between the Presidency Conclusions as purely internal discourse
and the speeches as exclusively external discourse, we are actually dealing with
hybrid texts, that is, more or less internal or external (see Fairclough, 1993; Iedema,
1997a; McElhinny, 1997.)
13. In the Presidency Conclusions we analysed, we found 59 instances of for what, vs 13
examples of for whom; in other words, in the struggle for category in this genre, 54 and
12 percent, respectively.
14. In terms of quantified models and concrete numbers see, for instance, Paul Krugman
(1995: 114): ‘[. . .] an extra percentage point of economic growth is associated with
about a 0.5 percentage point fall in the unemployment rate’.
15. Neoliberalism rejects all forms of active government involvement to improve the func-
tioning of economic markets. Its laissez-faire approach focuses on deregulation,
detaxation and privatization. Neoliberalism gained widespread political influence in
the late 1970s and early 1980s as a countermovement to Keynesian economics and
its principle that active government management could correct market failures and
reduce or even stabilize unemployment. With the general economic crises in the late
1980s, the prominence of Neoliberalism (and its political adaptions often referred to
as ‘Reaganomics’ and ‘Thatcherism’) decreased and there was a move, guided by the
political change in the US, back to modest acceptance of some Keynesian ideas and
policies.
AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S
This paper was written at the Research Centre Discourse, Politics and Identity in Vienna
with the support of the Wittgenstein Prize awarded to Ruth Wodak. Peter Muntigl further
acknowledges support by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
with Doctoral Fellowship #752-95-1442. As a group we would like to thank those who
provided comments on an early draft of this paper presented at the workshop ‘Challenges
in a Changing World—Issues in Critical Discourse Analysis’, held in Vienna 16–19 April
1998. Special thanks go to Theo van Leeuwen for his assistance with Section 3, and Alfred
Silber for his statistical consultation in Section 4. Finally, we would like to note that the
order of the authors on the title page is arbitrary and does not reflect an ordered degree of
input into the manuscript’s creation.
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S T R A E H L E received her PhD and Master’s degrees in Linguistics from

C A RO L Y N
Georgetown University, USA. Her research interests include crosscultural communication,
discourse analysis, and language policy and planning, in particular in the European
Union. She has worked extensively as an instructor and programme administrator in the
field of English as a Foreign Language/TESOL at Georgetown and co-ordinated the
Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics.
G I L B E RT W E I S S holds a Master’s degree in Social and Economic Sciences from the
University of Vienna. He is currently finishing his dissertation on ‘Political Reality and
Lifeworld’. His major research interests are in the sociology of political symbols and dis-
course, especially qualitative approaches like phenomenology, objective hermeneutics, and
discourse analysis. He is the project manager of the Wittgenstein Project ‘European Union
Organizations and the Discourse of Unemployment’ under the direction of Ruth Wodak.
A D D R E S S : ZIIS, Alserstrasse 21, 1080 Vienna, Austria [email: gilbert.weiss@univie.ac.at]
RU T H W O DA K is Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Linguistics at the

University of Vienna. Beside various other prizes, she has recently been awarded the
Wittgenstein Prize for Elite Researchers (1996). Very widely published, her books include
Disorders of Discourse (1996); Gender and Discourse (1997); Die Sprache der ‘Maechtigen’ und
‘Ohnmaechtigen’ (‘The language of the “powerful” and the “powerless” ’, with F. Menz, B.
Lutz and H. Gruber, 1985); and Language, Power and Ideology (1989). She has also co-
authored numerous publications, among them, ‘Wir sind alle unschuldige Taeter!’
Diskurshistorische Studien zum Nachkriegsantisemitismus in Oesterreich (‘ “We are all inno-
cent perpetrators!” Discourse-historical studies on post-war antisemitism in Austria’, with
R. de Cillia, H. Gruber, R. Mitten, P. Nowak and J. Pelikan, 1990); Sprachen der
Vergangenheiten. Oeffentliches Gedenken in oesterreichischen und deutschen Medien (‘Language

of the past: public memory in the Austrian and German media’, with F. Menz, R. Mitten and
F. Stern, 1994); Communicating Gender in Context (with H. Kotthoff, 1997); and Zur diskur-
siven Konstruktion nationaler Identitaet (‘On the discursive construction of national identity’,
with R. de Cillia, M. Reisigl, K. Liebharrt, K. Hofstaetter and M. Kargl, 1998). A D D R E S S :
Universität Wien, Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, FB: Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft,
Berggasse 11, A-1080 Wien, Austria. [email: ruth.wodak@univie.ac.at]
P E T E R M U N T I G L is a research fellow at the Research Centre Discourse, Politics, and
Identity in Vienna and a Doctoral student in Linguistics at Simon Fraser University in
Vancouver (Canada). His research interests include conversational arguing, conflict, talk-
in-therapy, and political interaction. He has recently published an article on conver-
sational arguing in Journal of Pragmatics.
M A R I A S E D L A K is an associate at the Research Centre for Discourse, Politics and Identity
in Vienna and is pursuing her PhD in linguistics at the University of Vienna. Her research
interests include discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and intercultural
communication. Since 1993, she has been affiliated with an international project on first-
language acquisition, and in 1997 she worked with the Wittgenstein project on the dis-
course of unemployment. Presently she is conducting research on political discourse as
part of an international study on racism.

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A RT I C L E 67

Struggle as metaphor in European

Discourse & Society

K E Y W O R D S : European Union (EU), metaphor, organizational discourse,

2. Background: European Council and European Commission

viduals regularly act as spokespersons in presenting developments in employ-

appears as a descriptor for (un)employment; rather, the way in which

3.1 STRUGGLE METAPHOR

3.1.1 Unemployment ⫽ problem ⫽ concern ⫽ top priority ⫽ (to) fight. Halliday

Particularly noteworthy in these Presidency Conclusions data is that the sen-

paragraphs of the respective employment sections. Finally, because ‘fighting

TA B L E 1 . ‘Fight’ in Presidency Conclusions

TA B L E 2 . Ideational content and semantic/referential relations in Presidency Conclusions

Line Who/what acts Action Complement

1 EU/Member fight (against)

* Interpreted here as co-referential with the preceding actions/complements.

On the basis of the sketch of sentences 1–5, 7, 8, presented in Table 3 (sen-

TA B L E 3 . Semantic/referential relations in Santer text

1 Unemployment is a problem in Europe

lem and as something to be fought explicit and exhibits links—or intertextual-

Indeed, these elements—unemployment problem/fight unemployment/job

3.1.2 Struggle as overarching metaphor in unemployment discourse. What we have

to describe this connection is in terms of an overarching metaphor of struggle.

4. Struggling with, against (using tools), and for

≈ more mental image ≈ more physical image

FIGURE 1 . Struggle as overarching metaphor

not on a struggle with a problem or against an opponent but on the (potentially)

4.1 STRUGGLING WITH : ABSTRACT PROBLEM

Important here is that nominalizing (un)employment as Europe’s problem in

Here, too, specifically in Example 7, it is Europe that is portrayed as being

4.2 STRUGGLING WITH : OBJECT

Verbs such as improving, contributing, and developing ultimately imply that by

4.3 STRUGGLING AGAINST : AGENT / ENEMY

Examples 12 and 13 demonstrate how unemployment may be categorized not

4.4 STRUGGLING AGAINST, USING TOOLS : AGENT / ENEMY

4.5 STRUGGLING FOR : SOMETHING OR SOMEONE

In example 21, although in the passive subject position, unemployment is the

4.6 SPEECHES AND PRESIDENCY CONCLUSIONS COMPARED

4 . Dimensions of struggle metaphor in EU Presidency Conclusions and speeches: Struggle

Presidency Conclusions Speeches Totals

Percentage Percentage Percentage

With abstract problem 003 001.65 19 024.05 022 008.43

⫽ 71.464, d.f. ⫽ 5, p ⫽ 5.078⫺14). The distribution of categories is shown in

making organizations to EU citizens. The public addressed by such speeches, of

thing, one can speak of a common opponent: in these data, unemployment. In

ations materialize institutions. It follows that organizational discourse refers to the

Abélès, M., Bellier, I. and McDonald, M. (1993) ‘Approche anthropologique de la com-

Rehberg, K.-S. (1994) ‘Institutionen als symbolische Ordnungen. Leitfragen und

S T R A E H L E received her PhD and Master’s degrees in Linguistics from

RU T H W O DA K is Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Linguistics at the

Vergangenheiten. Oeffentliches Gedenken in oesterreichischen und deutschen Medien (‘Language

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