The Metonymy EUrope as a Means of Legitimizing Nations in the Western Balkans

Abstract This chapter focuses on the metonymic use of lexeme Europe and country name in Montenegro North Macedonia with aim investigating their co-occurrences discursive-linguistic realizations concept N ation both countries. The analysis is based a corpus consisting political speeches, election slogans, media texts (both newspaper social media) that cover period from 2006 2011 Macedonia, respectively. Discourse Space Theory (Chilton 2004, 2014) Proximization (Cap 2009, 2013, 2017) provide theoretical framework against which legitimization particular conceptualizations framing are disclosed. shows although EU rope largely used for specific national (re)identification Western Balkans countries, these discourses characterized by complex legitimization: On temporal spatial axis, constructed as distant Other (e.g., “European integration,” “our European path”, future”), while axiological symbolic part Self face Montenegro”, “vote Macedonia”). divergent legitimation can be seen discursive linguistic handling protracted rapprochement processes management tool inner divisions countries along lines civic versus ethnic-national identification.