Hybridisation in EU Academic discourse. The representation of EU social actors

The aim of this study is to analyse academic discourse from a supranational perspective, i.e. to investigate how the EU promotes its commitment in Education and Training through the Erasmus Programme which is meant to help “Europe’s universities and other institutions to work together towards modernising curricula, funding and governance of higher education” . The Programme also includes discourses covering different areas. For instance, a legal dimension can be found in the Erasmus University Charter, which provides the general framework for all European cooperation activities and sets out the fundamental principles and the minimum requirements with which the higher education institution must comply when implementing its activities. Specifically, the main aim of this study is to analyse the discursive representation of social actor(s), i.e. ‘the EU’ and EU citizens, particularly with reference to interdiscursivity, i.e. elements belonging to different discourse practices (academic, institutional, legal, promotional) to investigate the role of ‘socially constitutive’ discourse practices (Fairclough 1992: 64, 1997, 2011) in creating ties between the institution and its citizens which help construct a common European identity based on legitimation and consensus-building grounded on a set of shared values and life experience.