Consumers at the heart of Europe: Language practices and identity building strategies Globalization

The study is centred on the role played by public communication that, in the words of Calhoun (2003: 243) "takes piace in, and helps to create, a space of relationships among citizens". EU communication policies thus reflect the need to gather consensus and create a "solidarity sphere" among its citizens that goes beyond particular interests, regions and face-to-face communities (Calhoun 2003: 244). Increasingly, emphasis is given to more concrete elements linked to the status of EU citizenship, such as the ever growing number of advantages and choices that Europeans can be offered as `rational consumers'. The analysis concentrates on the constructive effects of discourse and on the way it contributes to reproduce and transform social identities and relations of power (Fairclough 1992). On the one hand, the establishment and the promotion of a single EU legal framework of consumer rights can compensate for the generai lack of common cultural background in the EU; on the other, it can work as a strategy of 'omologa et impera': citizens, often united in their anti-European stance, are drawn together through discourse into a large, homologized community of consumers.