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The Euro Crisis
in the Press
Political Debate in Germany, Poland,
and the United Kingdom

Katarzyna Sobieraj
The Euro Crisis in the Press
 Katarzyna Sobieraj

The Euro Crisis

in the Press
Political Debate in Germany, Poland,
and the United Kingdom
Katarzyna Sobieraj
Independent Scholar
Brussels, Belgium

ISBN 978-3-031-13880-5    ISBN 978-3-031-13881-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13881-2

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
­institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 “The European approach to the crisis has been to talk in terms of great
drama while acting with self-defeating slowness or what one might have
called the fierce urgency of tomorrow.”
(Slouching towards Bethlehem: The Euro crisis. 2011. The Guardian,
November 11.)
“Discourse is a place where relations of power are exercised and enacted.”
(Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power. London: Longman, 43)
For Daniel and Jan
 Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this book are personal and do not
necessarily reflect the views or positions of any institution the author is
affiliated with.

ix
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Approaching Discourse Analysis of the Euro Crisis 13

3 Delineating the Boundaries of Discourse 37

4 Dimensions of the Euro Crisis 51

5 Social Actors in the Euro Crisis 99

6 Policy Legitimation in the Euro Crisis Discourse115

7 Metaphors of the Euro Crisis131

8 Conclusions147

Annex: Methodology161

Index175

xi
 About the Author

Katarzyna Sobieraj completed her doctorate at the Institute of

Journalism and Social Communication of the University of Wroclaw,
Poland. She holds MA in American Studies from Humboldt-University in
Berlin, Germany. She was an associate in the international research project
“The Euro Crisis, Media Coverage, and Perceptions of Europe within the
EU” at the Reuters Institute, University of Oxford, UK. In 2017, she was
a visiting graduate student at the European Studies Centre of the University
of Oxford, UK. She is based in Brussels, Belgium, and works at the
European Commission, Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and
Enlargement Negotiations. Her research traverses areas of political and
international communication, media discourse and narratives, and
European politics and foreign policy. Her previous publications focus on
discourse analysis of US presidential campaign speeches and metaphors in
the press. She speaks Polish, English, German, French and Russian.

xiii
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 The main fundamental root of the crisis 38

Fig. 3.2 The main responsibility to solve the crisis 39
Fig. 3.3 The main specific mechanism for response to the crisis 40
Fig. 3.4 The primary broader response to the crisis 41
Fig. 3.5 The main benefit from the existence of the Euro currency 43
Fig. 3.6 The main harmful consequence from the existence of the Euro
currency44
Fig. 3.7 The primary beneficiary from the Euro crisis 45
Fig. 3.8 The primary sufferer from the Euro crisis 46
Fig. 3.9 The main geopolitical frame 47
Fig. 3.10 The main portrayal of European Commission/European
Union/Euro zone institutions 48
Fig. 3.11 The main portrayal of the European Central Bank 49
Fig. 3.12 Consequences of the rescue measures 50
Fig. A.1 The distribution of news stories according to types of
newspapers and countries 168
Fig. A.2 The distribution of articles per period 170

xv
 List of Tables

Table 7.1 Occurrences of metaphorical frames across the analysed

sample in Poland, Germany and the UK (in per cent) based
on Joris, Puustinen et al. 134
Table A.1 The total number of articles sampled in the three member
states under scrutiny 166
Table A.2 The number of articles by newspaper: Germany 166
Table A.3 The number of articles by newspaper: Poland 167
Table A.4 The number of articles by newspaper: UK 167
Table A.5 The number of articles per period per country 169
Table A.6 The number of articles analysed by newspapers and countries 172

xvii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The increased significance of language in social life has attracted, among

others, greater attention to language use in the media as a tool to achieve
political goals. The relationship between media and politics has been
increasingly important in this respect as major social and political pro-
cesses, such as neoliberalism, can be seen as complex phenomena with a
partly linguistic-discursive character.
The interaction between political and media systems is a major factor in
determining the way both are organised and work (Mancini 2015, 28). As
Zielonka reminds, “the relationship between the media and politics has
been mainly understood as separate but with a mutual dependency, in
which the political system has the upper hand and largely determines the
shape of a media system” (313). Lately, this separation has virtually disap-
peared from our world and the two become ever more entangled. Political
systems feed the media with content for press reports, while media report-
ing of events often influences the reactions of politicians. For them, media
is also a means to reach their audiences. Journalists, on the other hand,
have emerged as influential actors on the political scene who have the
power to shape political agenda and co-construct specific events such as
crises (Strath and Wodak 2016, 31; Lampropoulou 2014, 469; Bourdieu
and Ferguson 1998).
Moreover, in contemporary societies, media are the main source of
information. They have the power to disseminate information to a large

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
K. Sobieraj, The Euro Crisis in the Press,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13881-2_1
2 K. SOBIERAJ

audience and to amplify the views of other social actors, especially opinion
leaders in order to build public perceptions around specific narratives. As
Critcher argues, “[media discourses] define, describe and delimit what is
possible to say and not possible to say” (Critcher 2003, 170).
Media also provide ways of understanding the world through different
representations, and media reporting about politics is one of the main fac-
tors in constructing a society and shaping its worldviews. As Tuchman
notes, “[n]ews … helps to constitute it [an event] as a shared social phe-
nomenon, … news defines and shapes that event” (Tuchman 1978, 184).
As a consequence, our perception of the world is often formed through
exposure to certain media content that can be biased. As Critcher also
claims, media manipulate, exaggerate or misrepresent events, particularly
under the pressure to provide news within strict deadlines, and to update
information quicker than the competition (Critcher 2003).
As a result, media tend to spin events in a negative direction, which has
a particular effect on the crisis situations. Media also define events and
shape responses through its volume of coverage, framing and spin (Cross
2017, 33–35). They often serve as a “primary definer” which frames an
event as a crisis thus becoming a contributing factor to the social construc-
tion of a crisis (Critcher 2003, 15). According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda,
the media can play a particularly crucial role in the early stages of the crisis
by over-reporting and distorting events, as well as predicting their nega-
tive development (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 2009, 23), as in case of the
Euro crisis which this book will demonstrate.
Media scholars involved in comparative research on European media
coverage encounter a particular difficulty. The coverage of European issues
is largely presented through the perspective of national media or special-
ised English language business papers and journals read across Europe.
On an everyday basis, Europeans are thus primarily provided with news
coverage framed through the national political and economic institutions
of their respective member state (Picard 2015, 2). It is often claimed that
due to this division the development of wider and trans-national or
“European” patterns of interpretation is limited in favour of national
interests and ideologies (Krzyżanowski 2019, 5).
This book investigates the communicative construction of the discourse
on the Euro crisis in the European press in the context of the complex
relationship between media and politics.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

EU and Its Crises

One of the words often used in media discourse about Europe today is
crisis. This is not a new phenomenon in the European Union’s history. In
fact, the EU has encountered several significant crises since its creation.
These have included among others the failure of the European defence
and political communities in the 1950s, France’s vetoes of UK member-
ship in the 1960s, the 1965 Empty Chair crisis, the attempts to form a
European Monetary System and the September 1992 “Black Wednesday”
crisis (Cross 2017, 8–9). The EU also experienced a crisis of European
foreign and security policy at the beginning of the 1990s during the so-­
called Balkan conflict. One of the more recent challenges included the
Eastern enlargement of the EU, the largest in the Union’s history, that is
often understood as a process of ongoing smaller crises. One would also
need to mention here the rejection of the European constitution in 2005
through referenda in France and the Netherlands (Hepp 2016). Many of
these events were perceived in Europe as critical junctures, primarily as
they questioned the viability of the European integration project (Cross
2017, 8–9).
In the more recent past, the EU has again faced a concentration of
events that were widely reported in the media as crises: the Euro crisis that
started in 2008; the annexation of Crimea by Russia (2014); a wave of
refugees coming to Europe as a result of a war in Syria, widely referred to
as the migration crisis (2015); Great Britain’s decision to leave the EU as
a result of the referendum on the EU membership (2016); and the ongo-
ing war in Ukraine (2022).
In relation to these events, the 2008 Euro crisis was of a structural and
institutional nature. It was a crisis of democratic legitimacy within its insti-
tutions, which has arguably led to a political crisis. It has been an impor-
tant focus of media coverage both within Europe and beyond and has
occupied a significant place in the press, television broadcasts and in every-
day conversations. As Hepp reports, already in December 2003, The Sun
mentioned the phrase “EU in crisis”, beginning the discourse that gained
in intensity when the financial crisis exploded (1). On 13 December 2008,
the German tabloid Bild used the metaphor of a domino-effect to describe
the ongoing problems with the Euro and financial politics. At the same
time, in the Polish Dziennik Zachodni, one could read of a “joint strug-
gle” of EU member states against the crisis (Hepp 2016, 1).
4 K. SOBIERAJ

The number of significant, if not existential, difficulties that the EU has

experienced and which recently have been increasingly referred to as “cri-
ses” were characterised by a widespread belief that the EU’s very existence
has been under serious threat. It should be noted that Europe’s existential
crises are perceived as such also because they are socially constructed as
such, which means that the society recognises and defines these events as
crises (Cross 2017, 24).

Summary of Main Aims, Methods and Tools

Political scientists and media scholars use different concepts and interpre-
tative frames, different research agendas and address different audiences.
One of the results of this is that most of the investigative work in the field
of political discourse focuses on a single country with little comparative
perspective. Additionally, most of the research comes from the liberal
Anglo-American academic tradition (Zielonka 2015, 2). I attempt to
overcome the divide between communication/media studies and politics,
and put the European experience in a comparative context. Moreover, this
book addresses the gap between quantitative and qualitative analysis when
it comes to the investigation of political communication by complement-
ing the quantitative analysis with a qualitative component.
This study also focuses on the Euro crisis because it has been of funda-
mental importance for the history of the European Union, considered the
most serious threat facing the Union’s very existence since its formation.
In the tradition of Critical Discourse Studies, the book investigates the
ways in which discourse produces and reproduces social domination, and
demystifies the hegemony of specific discourses. The book compares and
contrasts the political debate in the media on the Euro crisis in selected
EU member states and explores how the crisis has been communicatively
constructed. Its main objectives are to pinpoint the convergence and/or
divergence in the communicative construction of the discourses in differ-
ent countries and by different political orientations, replying to three
research questions:

• Was the discourse on the Euro crisis in the Polish, German and
British press of different political orientations convergent or
divergent?
• If it was convergent, which dominant ideology did it represent?
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

• If it was divergent, what were the lines along which the differences
were constructed?

As debates and arguments about values require a normative stance that

is often hidden, it is important to challenge hegemonic opinions and ide-
ologies expressed in a discourse. Therefore, I deconstruct ideological posi-
tions and demonstrate which values and beliefs underlie the various
proposals or claims that are presented in the media discourse on the Euro
crisis. I assess whether the discourse on the Euro crisis reflected the various
positions of all the parties involved or whether it reinforced the dominant
stance and whose stance it was. This should, additionally, lead to conclu-
sions on the extent to which, and in which ways, the discourse on the Euro
crisis has been Europeanised in national debates.
Using a combination of quantitative content based and qualitative text
based analyses, I present the discursive constructions of the European
Union and European values in a selection of daily newspapers throughout
selected time periods in three EU member states: Poland, Germany and
the United Kingdom.
Germany is one of the founding members of the EU and a leading
member of the Euro zone (“From 6 to 28 Members”). At the time of the
analysed sample Poland was an important pro-European member of the
EU. Furthermore, under the terms of the Treaty of Accession with the
European Union, Poland agreed to “participate in the Economic and
Monetary Union from the date of accession as a Member State with a
derogation” (“Treaty of Accession of the Czech Republic, Estonia,
Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia
(2003)” 2003). That means that Poland is required by the Treaty to
accept the Euro under specific conditions without a target date. Finally,
the UK was a predominantly Eurosceptic EU member at the time of anal-
ysis, not a member of the Euro zone, and has been granted a permanent
opt-out clause, which means that it was not required to participate in the
third stage of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and conse-
quently to introduce the Euro (“United Kingdom: EMU Opt-out
Clause” 2006).
The book points to an ideologically convergent picture across the
member states and the newspapers under scrutiny and argues that the
discourse employed by the examined outlets reinforced the dominant
story about the Euro crisis that has been presented by politicians along the
lines of neoliberal economic theory. The structural reasons that led to the
6 K. SOBIERAJ

EU democratic deficit are underlined, but stereotypical misrepresentations

such as the negligence of southern nations also occur in this context. The
solution to the problem was reported as largely being possible through the
adoption of structural reforms and austerity measures in the economies in
trouble and, in a longer term, creating a fiscal union of all member states.
Countries that fell into the crisis are represented as wild, irresponsible,
unable to discipline themselves and in need of external help to temper
them. The Greeks were also passivised and impersonalised, which resulted
in backgrounding their identity and their role.
Additionally, I find that the Euro crisis itself is presented as a major
actor, personified and endowed with enormous powers. Expressions of
duration suggest a protracted state of affairs allowing the decision makers
to justify their policies with the crisis. The analysis of metaphors delivers
further findings about the deagentalisation of the policy makers through
dominant metaphorical frames of disease and natural disaster. Furthermore,
arguments, which at first sight appear rational, in fact, take the form of
“moralised activities”, while authorisation with the use of an expert is the
most frequently used legitimating strategy across the sample.
The dominant neoliberal narrative fell on the fertile ground of the soci-
ety facing the protracted state of exception and more eager to uncritically
accept the neoliberal solutions to the crisis offered by the politicians.

Research Design
The study is an inductive analysis on the Euro crisis, structured on the
discourse-historical approach (DHA) and derives additional elements as
deemed suitable from the socio-semiotic approach of Theo Van Leeuwen,
the socio-cognitive approach of Teun van Dijk, the dialectical-relational
approach of Norman Fairclough and text linguistics.
The analysis follows a multilevel pattern, originally introduced by
Wodak and Meyer in Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2001) and
later elaborated by Krzyżanowski in The Discursive Construction of
European Identities (2010). It distinguishes between the entry-level (the-
matic, topic-oriented or content oriented) and in-depth (strategy and
argumentation oriented) analysis. In the entry phase, the focus is mainly
on discourse topics that allow researchers to identify the key tendencies in
the contents of analysed texts and overall framing of the discussed issues.
In the next stage, the in-depth analysis, focuses on the key patterns of
argumentation and legitimation, including the role of social actors and the
strategic use of metaphors.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

My analysis relies on the notion of discursive strategy as introduced by

Reisigl and Wodak in Discourse and Discrimination (2001). Following
that approach, I perform three levels of analysis, to establish: (1) topics of
the discourse under investigation (entry phase, content analysis), (2) dis-
cursive strategies (in-depth analysis) combined with (3) elements of lin-
guistic methods with which these strategies has been realised (Reisigl and
Wodak 2015, 32).
The aim of the first step of the analysis is to establish “discourse topics”
defined as “semantic macro-propositions” or “the most ‘important’ or
‘summarising’ ideas” (Dijk 1984, 56). Following van Dijk’s definition,

[t]opics conceptually, summarise the text, and specify its most important
information. … The hierarchical set of topics or macro-propositions forms
the thematic or topical structure of the text. Language users employ such
macro-structures in order to understand globally and to summarise a text.
In news discourse, the top of this macro-structure is conventionally expressed
in the headline and the lead paragraph. (Van Dijk 1991, 131)

Thus the aim of the entry-level analysis is to establish the boundaries of

identified discourses. Moreover, having identified the main topics of the
discourse on the Euro crisis, I also analyse to which degree the topics iden-
tified have been prioritised depending on the country of origin or the
political orientation of the newspaper. Thus, I also investigate whether
there were primary and secondary discourse topics (Wodak and
Krzyżanowski 2008). The entry-level analysis is performed by means of
quantitative analysis on a broad sample of texts.
Turning to in-depth qualitative analysis, I explore the discursive strate-
gies and their realisations (the second stage in the Reisigl and Wodak’s
model). These strategies are defined after Bourdieu as “actions objectively
oriented towards goals that may not be goals subjectively pursued” (Wodak
2009, 32)—in other words, these are intentional discursive practices
employed to achieve a particular aim (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, 44).
As a third step, the analysis incorporates pragmatic features of texts in
the exploration of the linguistic means with which these strategies have
been realised. A close textual analysis of selected articles integrates the
linguistic details and the socio-political and economic aspects of the
debate. Among others, I take a close look at representation of social actors
as well as the construction (or denial) of their agency, the argumentation
and legitimation strategies (Van Leeuwen 2008), including the use of
metaphors (Semino 2008).
8 K. SOBIERAJ

As a result, the analysis has a dual focus. On the one hand, it concen-
trates on the discourse in selected daily newspapers and examines, by
means of topic-oriented analysis, the key themes and frames in the medi-
ated political discourse in the complete sample studied. On the other
hand, a closer look is taken on the discourse of one selected period within
the broader context of the Euro crisis that generated the largest coverage
among the analysed newspapers pegged around the resignation of Silvio
Berlusconi from the position of the prime minister of Italy and the appoint-
ment for this position of Mario Monti (11–14 November 2011). This was
also an important event as it marked a turning point in the development
of the Euro crisis with the adoption of a Brussels-favoured scenario and
measures towards the way out of the crisis by the Europe’s fifth largest
economy. This second step of analysis examines in which ways policy and
political responses have been discursively constructed and legitimised.
In line with the discourse-historical tradition in Critical Discourse
Studies, this study perceives discourse as a social practice. The focus is on
how social phenomena—in this case phenomena related to crisis situa-
tions—are constructed and represented linguistically in political discourse.
This also allows to demonstrate that discourse is a carrier of different
forms of legitimation and ideologies, and of discursively constructed forms
of political agency (Krzyżanowski 2010; Wodak and Meyer 2001).
This research project subscribes to the tradition of CDA of engaging in
a close reading of specific texts and the tendency to move away from the
analysis of a large samples of texts in favour of close analysis of individual
texts, with the aim of disclosing patterns and tendencies in the media
debates. It was demonstrated in (Fairclough 2003), Wodak and Meyer
(2015) and Vaara among others.

Structure of the Book

In the following chapters, I present theoretical anchors underpinning my
research (Chap. 2). The chapter operationalises the Critical Discourse
Analysis approach aiming to shed light on the discursive aspect of power
and domination in case of neoliberalism. Moreover, the chapter gives a
brief overview of crises in the EU history and introduce Giorgio Agamben’s
notion of a state of exception as a dominant paradigm of government in
contemporary politics, creating ground for deagentalisation of political
decisions. Finally, the concepts of mediatisation and Europeanisation, and
the dominant media models in the three EU member states
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

concerned—Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom—are discussed to

demonstrate their impact on the reporting on the Euro crisis.
In Chap. 3, I perform an entry-phase analysis by comparing and con-
trasting the findings of the quantitative analysis for the three member
states under scrutiny. This analysis serves to establish the limits of the
media discourse, the main topics and the key actors, which allows me to
identify the analytical categories for the in-depth textual analysis.
Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 focus on the qualitative, textual analysis of a
selected sample of articles. Based on the primary material published by
selected newspapers, I deconstruct the discourse around the event that
gathered the broadest coverage within the sample—the resignation of
Silvio Berlusconi from the position of prime minister of Italy and the
appointment for this position of Mario Monti (12–13 November 2011)—
with the focus on roots, solutions, consequences, as well as temporal and
spatial representations of the Euro crisis (Chap. 4). Further, I investigate
the representation of social actors (Chap. 5) and legitimating strategies
(Chap. 6), including the use of metaphors (Chap. 7).
The book is partially a result of a cooperation on the international proj-
ect “The Euro Crisis, Media Coverage, and Perceptions of Europe within
the EU” hosted by the Reuters iInstitute at the University of Oxford,
United Kingdom (2010–2012), in which I was a project associate, manag-
ing the Polish team. The data gathered within this research project serves
as a departure point for my analysis.

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Strath, B., and Ruth Wodak. 2016. Europe—Discourse—Politics—Media—
History: Constructing “Crises”? In European Public Sphere and the Media, ed.
A. Triandafyllidou, Ruth Wodak, and Michał Krzyżanowski, 15–33. S.l.:
Palgrave Macmillan.
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Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia (2003)”. 2003. EUR-Lex.
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html#new-­2-­30.
Tuchman, Gaye. 1978. Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality.
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“United Kingdom: EMU Opt-out Clause”. 2006. EUR-Lex. https://eur-­lex.
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 1 INTRODUCTION 11

Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2008. Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse
Analysis. Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. Oxford; New York: Oxford
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Wodak, Ruth, ed. 2009. The Discursive Construction of National Identity. 2nd ed.
Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Wodak, Ruth, and Michał Krzyżanowski. 2008. Qualitative Discourse Analysis in
the Social Sciences. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK; New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer, eds. 2001. Methods of Critical Discourse
Analysis. Introducing Qualitative Methods. London; Thousand
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———, eds. 2015. Methods of Critical Discourse Studies. Sage.
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Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 CHAPTER 2

Approaching Discourse Analysis

of the Euro Crisis

Notion of Crisis
The term crisis comes from the Greek word κρίσις (krisis) which has its
roots in the verb κρίνω (krino) meaning to “separate” (part, divorce), to
“choose”, to “judge”, to “decide”, to “disagree” or to “fight”. This has
allowed a broad spectrum of meanings (Koselleck and Richter 2006,
357–358). Originally, in the medical context, crisis would signify a deci-
sion in the sense of reaching a verdict or a judgment at a turning point of
a disease. “It was coined to denote a moment in which the future of the
patient was in the balance, and the doctor had to decide which way to go
and what treatment to apply to help the ill into convalescence” (Bauman
and Bordoni 2014, 7). It was also a condition that called for a decisive
judgment and a decision between alternatives (Roitman 2014).
Although the primary medical meaning of the crisis remained domi-
nant until the early modern period, from the seventeenth century on, the
term entered the domains of politics, economics, history, and psychology,
among others, in its metaphorical meaning. In particular, in politics it
came to mean a “decision”, in a sense of reaching a turning point (Koselleck
and Richter 2006, 357–358). The medical origins have been preserved in
contemporary political language but, given its metaphorical flexibility, it
has gained in importance and entered into daily use. Today, there is virtu-
ally no sphere of life that has not been analysed and interpreted through
the concept of crisis and the decisions and choices it entails and demands

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Switzerland AG 2022
K. Sobieraj, The Euro Crisis in the Press,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13881-2_2
14 K. SOBIERAJ

(Koselleck and Richter 2006, 358). The most common understanding in

day-to-day situations is that a crisis is an exceptional event in the history of
an organisation, institution or society.
A widely accepted definition includes its characterisation as “a serious
threat to the basic structures or the fundamental values and norms of social
system, which—under time pressure and highly uncertain circumstances—
necessitates making critical decisions” (Rosenthal et al. 1989, 10; Cross
2017, 23). Within the field of international relations, Ikenberry defines a
political crisis in a similar way: “a historical juncture when conflict within
the political order has risen to the point that the interests, institutions, and
shared identities that define and undergird the political system are put in
jeopardy. The settled rules, expectations, and institutions that constitute
the political order are rendered unsettled” (Ikenberry 2008, 3). This polit-
ical crisis might, moreover, be seen as an existential crisis—an event that
anticipates a fundamental change or even an end to a certain way of life.
As an unexpected event, a crisis triggers urgency for political leaders to
respond in new ways to manage it and to resolve it. The use of the concept
of crisis reduces the room for manoeuvre as the time for taking decisions
is determined by imminent pressures for action (Koselleck and Richter
2006, 370). Therefore, as Bauman and Bordoni accurately summarise,

speaking of crisis of whatever nature, including the economic, we convey

firstly a feeling of uncertainty, of suddenness, of an unstable and dangerous
situation, of our ignorance of the direction in which the affairs are about to
turn—and secondly the urge to intervene: to select the right measures and
decide to apply them promptly. When we diagnose the situation as ‘critical’,
we mean just that: the conjunction of a diagnosis and a call for action.
(Bauman and Bordoni 2014, 7)

The implied assumption is, above all, that the crisis is discontinuous
rather than a permanent feature of the narrative and should not be assigned
the characteristics of a permanent condition (Holton 1987, 504).

2008 Financial and Economic Crisis and New Rules

of the Game

The economic turmoil that broke out in 2008 in the United States, caused
by the breakdown of subprime and housing markets and the subsequent
collapse of Lehmann Brothers in the United States, turned into a global
 2 APPROACHING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EURO CRISIS 15

economic recession and is recognised today as a global crisis that affected

all sectors of the economy (Kotz 2009, 305). The crisis initially touched
US investment banks, however, due to the structure of financial markets it
spread to Europe and other parts of the world with unprecedented speed
(Kutter 2014, 446–448; Kundera 2017, 393). Scholars from the Marxist
tradition of economics, but also Keynesian economists, emphasised its
structural and ideological aspects as another major capitalist crisis (Mylonas
2012, 646).
By the term Euro crisis I refer to the crisis witnessed in the Euro zone
since 2008, which in many ways was a continuation of the 2008 global
financial crisis. In Europe, it began to manifest itself in 2008 with the
decline in real estate prices, which, as a consequence, led to the bankrupt-
cies of banks and investment firms. Fearing the costs of bankruptcies,
many countries, such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, were forced
to take over the liabilities and recapitalise the banks with state capital. As a
result, these governments faced fiscal crises in 2009. Despite swiftly
adopted anti-crisis measures, the EU was criticised as ineffective, because
the crisis revealed the lack of coordination of member states’ economic
policies and institutionalised mechanisms of control that would allow for
a common response to emergency situations (Kutter 2014, 448; Kundera
2018, 230–232).
The Greek government disclosed in October 2009 that its borrowing
level was higher than previously reported and higher than permitted by
the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). This led to the lack of trust by the
creditors that supported the Greek sovereign debt and, eventually, to the
Euro zone crisis. Even though at first it was managed as a routine scandal,
it quickly turned into a political crisis in individual member states. It
affected Portugal, Italy, and Spain particularly hard, but also Ireland, and
later the entire Union (Kutter 2014, 447–448).
The escalating financial crisis revealed the weaknesses of the Union,
among others, the lack of coordinated economic policies of the member
states. Existing instruments proved inadequate and insufficient to bring
the situation under control. The functioning of the European Monetary
Union (EMU) was questioned, which in turn led to the structural crisis.
Continuous disagreements among EU governments as regards the ade-
quate rescue measures paralysed the functioning of the Community. The
situation was solved only in early May 2010 when the EU Council agreed
on a rescue package for Greece. The adoption of the Europe 2020 Strategy
and the creation of a task force on economic governance in March 2010
16 K. SOBIERAJ

mitigated the consequences of the crisis and paved the way for the reform
of the EMU (Kutter 2014, 447–448; Kundera 2018, 230–232).
It soon became visible that this crisis was a multilevel phenomenon that
included not only economic dimensions such as a banking crisis, a sover-
eign debt crisis and a market crisis. It also had political repercussions, caus-
ing structural and institutional uncertainties within the EU, and ultimately
triggering a political crisis in the Union as a whole. In this way the Euro
crisis became a “signifier for various financial and economic-related phe-
nomena”, and subject to diverse interpretations. Moreover, as a signifier,
it moved away from its etymological meaning and came to mean a pro-
tracted state of affairs (Hepp 2016, 6–7).
Bauman and Bordoni too noted that one of the distinguishing features
of this crisis was its duration. “When one crisis ends, … another takes its
place. Or perhaps it is the same huge crisis that feeds on itself and changes
over time … becoming an everyday habit which we have to deal with
rather than an occasional, annoying inconvenience to get rid of in the
quickest way possible” (Bauman and Bordoni 2014, 6–7).
The discourse around the Euro crisis was thus a notable example of
how “crisis” seems to have lost the meaning of a decisive moment in time.
The economic crisis has helped the governments of European countries to
introduce the rhetoric of a permanent state of exception, which was reflected
and perpetuated in the media coverage. Uncertainty associated with a cri-
sis has thus been extended into the future, while the moment of decision
has not been ultimately linked to a solution (Bauman and Bordoni 2014,
6–7; Agamben 2010, 2).
This change of meaning has significant consequences. Giorgio
Agamben, an Italian contemporary philosopher, argues that the Euro cri-
sis has been used to serve the aim of the governing elites to achieve a
permanent state of exception as the main way to govern in Western democ-
racies (Agamben 2010; White 2015, 303). Apart from being the domi-
nant paradigm of government in contemporary politics, the state of
exception has become an everyday reality, in which any given decision of
the government can be justified as an anti-crisis measure. The crisis has
thus become “a part of normality” in political and social life (Agamben
2010; Bauman and Bordoni 2014, 6–7).
This normalisation of crisis blurred the distinction between crisis and
normality: crisis is no longer seen as a decisive moment that demands solu-
tions in order to restore normality (Holton 1987, 503). In the current
situation, the crisis as an instrument of power serves to legitimise political
 2 APPROACHING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EURO CRISIS 17

and economic decisions, depriving citizens of an opportunity to decide on

alternatives. Proposed solutions are defended as a response to crisis cir-
cumstances whose exceptionality is often marked by the vocabulary of
“emergency”, “exceptional”, “save”, “rescue” and “security”. The sense
of urgency that permeates emergency politics is often used to justify the
lack of debate, consultation, and other forms of efforts to win public sup-
port. Necessity, rather than consent, becomes the main governing princi-
ple, while any event with an adverse effect on the economy is “blamed on
the crisis”. This frees decision makers from taking responsibility and can
be seen as a form of depersonalisation and deagentalisation (Bauman and
Bordoni 2014, 3; White 2015, 30).
This form of emergency politics has been widely manifested through-
out Europe since 2008 at both the EU and national levels. As White cor-
rectly points out, perhaps the most salient instance of emergency rhetoric
by European political leaders, seeking to increase their executive powers
and limit public debates over unpopular structural changes and reforms,
was Barroso’s infamous credo “exceptional measures for exceptional
times” (White 2015, 304).
The implication that crisis is permanent by both member state govern-
ments and the EU institutions has allowed them to escape justifying politi-
cal failures. As such, it has also been an important aspect of the
communicative construction of the European Union.

Europeanisation of Debate on the Euro Crisis

The framing of Europe as “in crisis” is not a new phenomenon.
Paradoxically, this ongoing narrative seems to become a constitutive ele-
ment of Europe. Scholars have argued that crises play an important role in
the European integration and in the construction of a European society.
The communicative construction of Europe within the debate on crisis has
been the focus of research that discussed various crises and their contribu-
tion to the emergence of the European Public Sphere (EPS)1 (e.g. Joris
et al.; (Kaitatzi-Whitlock 2014; Post and Vollbracht 2013; Triandafyllidou
et al. 2009; Tzogopoulos 2013; Wodak and Angouri 2014). Empirical
studies confirm that crises lead to a higher level of European

1
The European Public Sphere (EPS) is a widely researched concept which is introduced
here as the context for the further analysis rather than an analytical category. It is important
from the point of view of the reception of press stories.
18 K. SOBIERAJ

societalisation2 and result in a more intense cross-border communication

within Europe and about Europe, as well as a politicisation of the dis-
course on the EU (Triandafyllidou et al. 2009; Hepp 2016, 35).
Krzyżanowski found that one can observe significant intensification and
acceleration of the formation of the European Public Sphere at times of
different crisis events (Krzyżanowski 2009, 20). Moreover, according to
Cross and Ma, European actors seem to use crises as windows of opportu-
nity that open space to “further shape European order, enhance legiti-
macy, and increase integration” (Cross and Ma 2013, 1).
As regards the Euro Crisis, Kaiser and Kleinen-von Königslöw (2016)
note that the crisis fostered the Europeanisation of national public spheres,
meaning that public attention regarding Europe has increased in the
member states due to the media coverage and that European issues have
become more salient in national media contexts. Their findings show that
various stories on the Euro crisis were not only discussed simultaneously,
but they were also framed in similar ways (Kaiser and Kleinen-von
Königslöw 2016, 1, 15).
This is further confirmed by Risse, who underlines that the coverage of
EU issues in national media has increased significantly since the mid-­1990s.
Risse also points to available data on the Euro crisis that prove a substan-
tial and repeated presence of a few supranational EU and executive actors,
for example, from other member states, in various debates. For example,
German Chancellor Angela Merkel dominated in various national media
contexts (Risse 2014, 1211). They can thus be seen as linked and consti-
tuting a part of a common European debate.
Europeanisation also means that “similar frames are used in the various
public arenas to allow cross-border understanding and communication”
(Risse 2014, 1211). Kriesi and Grande argue that both national and
European executive actors tend to frame the Euro crisis predominantly in
economic terms, while political parties also use cultural frames (Kriesi
2012; Grande and Kriesi 2015; Risse 2014, 1211–1212). Joris et al.
(2015) measured the occurrence of metaphorical frames in the Euro crisis
coverage and distinguished four main frames present across ten EU

2
Hepp refers the term societalisation (from German Vergesellschaftung) to the writings of
Max Weber and describes the continuous process of constructing society. He applies this idea
of society to the field of economic and fiscal policy and argues, after Heidenreich (2014), that
from an institutional perspective, various crises, including the Euro crisis, can be understood
“as a chance for an incremental Europeanisation” (Hepp 2016, 33).
 2 APPROACHING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EURO CRISIS 19

member states with different intensification: disease, war, natural disaster

and game.
On the other hand, based on the research on German and Spanish edi-
torials, Drewski points to a sharp north-south divide in the framing of the
Euro crisis despite it having converged around a common set of issues
(Drewski 2015, 266). This is the context in which the metaphorical frames
and representations of social actors and their influence on Europeanisation
will be investigated in the sample under scrutiny.
Once again, the Euro crisis is central to the analysis of the political
discourse about Europe, but crisis seems to also comprise a positive com-
ponent. Roitman and Hepp recall that for Foucault, it is productive, as it
involves a change, and through this necessitates transformation (Roitman;
Hepp 2016, 32–33). Conflictual events like the Euro crisis might, there-
fore, be even more important for the communicative construction of
Europe than any consensual communication as they open new spaces for
social actors and for their interpretations of the events. Eder has described
the Euro crisis as a kind of “tipping point” (Eder 2014, 220) in the con-
struction of Europe, representing “a ‘critical moment’ in the evolution of
a European society” (Eder 2014, 219) and “triggering people-making in
Europe” (Eder 2014, 224). Using Albert Hirschman’s (1970) terminol-
ogy, it has become an “event in which the people raised their ‘voice’
rather than an ‘exit’ from a discourse about Europe, the EU and its
future” (Eder 2014, 219; Hirschman 1970, 30; Hepp 2016). As Risse
puts it: “the more contentious European policies and politics become and
the more social mobilisation occurs on European issues, the more we
actually observe the emergence of a European Public Sphere” (Risse
2010, 112). Likewise, Krzyżanowski (2009) found that the representa-
tion of Europe in news media discourse shifted over time from causing
problems for the nation to being a source of common values (see
Krzyżanowski 2009).
It is worth investigating whether the Euro crisis indeed brought the
Europeanisation of the debate in the sense that the discourse was shaped
in a convergent way, with the main topics and actors being discussed in a
similar way, or on the contrary, whether anti-EU rhetoric and Eurosceptic
attitudes and opinions in the press were more present, which would signify
a divergent element.
20 K. SOBIERAJ

Euro Crisis as Mediatised Conflict

Through their intensive reporting on the Euro crisis and adopting certain
perceptions of it, the media played an active role in its communicative
construction. The media are not simply the prism through which events
are reported, but they play an integral part of the articulation of a conflict.
That is, they have an “active performative involvement and constitutive
role within” it, which is why the crisis is considered to be a mediatised
conflict (Cottle 2006, 9).
According to Cross, during the Euro crisis, the media often served as a
“threat multiplier”, strengthening negative ideas about events that in turn
had an impact on perceptions about the future of the EU, and thus fuelled
a self-fulfilling prophecy (Cross 2017, 6–7). Additionally, news media
played a significant role in the formation of consensus, as it is the role of
the media to not only report and inform but also to create space for reflec-
tion and potentially for action (Lampropoulou 2014, 468). The Euro cri-
sis was hence not only reflected but also reinforced by media in the
public sphere.
For example, Risse found that the representations of the EU and its
member states in the Euro crisis discourse brought out the most severe
stereotypes that Europeans might ascribe to each other. In the initial phase
of the crisis, media discourses portraying Greece as either the “perpetra-
tor” or the “victim” have become common. Greek street posters, for
instance, depicted German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Nazi uniform
with the EU stars around the swastika (Risse 2014, 1210). On the other
hand, as Wodak demonstrated, “Greece has been continuously con-
structed as the weakest link of the EU ‘family’ and the starting point of a
potentially ‘contagious’ Euro zone crisis” (Wodak and Angouri 2014,
417). The two metaphors were used to position Self and Other in various
contexts to explain socioeconomic changes and have been reflected in the
analysed sample as well.
As Bickes et al. argue, the discourse shifted and evolved over time,
changing the mediatised images of the Greek people:

The initial phase of Greek bashing in 2010/2011, when Greece and its role
within the European financial crisis were depicted in an indecently harsh and
aggressive manner, was accompanied by public demands for a Grexit.
Compared to the start of the crisis in 2010, a considerable change took place
in 2012 when the tone generally became more moderate and less offending.
 2 APPROACHING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EURO CRISIS 21

The debt-burdened countries, and especially their population, receive much

more sympathy as the crisis progresses and the attention of the audience is
often drawn to the suffering of those in the crisis-hit countries. … The
media tried to convey the message that these people are suffering from poli-
ticians’ mistakes, the banking crisis and economic stagnation. (Bickes et al.
2014, 438–439)

The Euro crisis triggered multiple cleavages and conflicts reflected in

various media texts: among others between left and right or between
Greece and “others” (Wodak and Angouri 2014, 418). In the context of
the claim of the Europeanisation of the debate on the Euro crisis, these
divisions are particularly relevant to media research addressing the media-
tised communicative construction of the crisis, as the media frame the
debate and disseminate narratives and scenarios about it.

Power and Ideology in Critical Discourse Studies

Located within the social constructivist paradigm, Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA) looks at the ways in which individuals make sense of the
world by means of construction of subjective meanings and their negotia-
tion. The key claim of CDA is that major social and political processes and
movements, such as, for instance, neoliberalism, are complex phenomena
with a partly linguistic-discursive character. Therefore, I use CDA, which
takes a problem-oriented and interdisciplinary approach, to disentangle
this complexity. It is not aimed at investigating linguistic units per se but at
analysing, understanding and interpreting complex social phenomena that
require a multidisciplinary and multi-methodological approach (Wodak
and Meyer 2015, 2).
With regard to power relations, CDA sees media discourses as compo-
nents of a social world providing different discursive constructions and
representations. Therefore, CDA highlights the discursive nature of power
relations in contemporary societies, for instance, in how they are exercised
and negotiated between media and politics (Wodak and Meyer 2015,
2–3). In the tradition of Critical Theory, Critical Discourse Studies (CDS)
aim to shed light on the discursive aspect of social processes of power and
domination, which in a dialectical understanding of a social world are
implied in a particular discursive conceptualisation of the world. In other
words, the relations between power and domination are not simply named
in language but conceptualised. While people often remain unaware of
22 K. SOBIERAJ

both the ideological charge of using language in particular ways and the
underlying relations of power, CDA aims to make these aspects of dis-
course as social practice more visible. Hence, CDA frequently explores the
linguistic means used to “reinforce and intensify inequalities in society”
and aims at revealing “structures of power and unmasking ideology”
(Wodak 2013, 80).
Power relates to an asymmetric relationship among social actors belong-
ing to different social groups or holding different social positions. Following
Max Weber, Wodak and Meyer regard power as “the possibility of having
one’s own will within a social relationship against the will or interests of
others”. Some of the ways in which power can be exercised are, for instance,
physical violence, gaining control through threats or promises, submission
to authority, or control through material objects, such as means of produc-
tion, transportation, weapons etc (Reisigl and Wodak 2015, 88).
Within CDS, power is usually perceived in the Foucauldian sense, it is
an instrument of persuasion, while linguistic expressions can provide a
tool to alter and express the distribution of power in hierarchical struc-
tures (Wodak and Meyer 2015, 10–11; Jabłońska 2012, 80). Accordingly,
discourse plays a pivotal role in the exercise of power, which can be legiti-
mised or de-legitimised in discourses. Texts often constitute sites where
social struggle takes place and where traces of differing ideological fights
for dominance and hegemony are manifested. Discourses express social
cognition and may thus influence the worldviews of other groups and
their members (Wodak and Meyer 2015, 71).
Therefore, CDS researchers investigate the ways in which discourse
produces or reproduces social domination, understood mainly as the
power abuse of one group over others, and examine which linguistic forms
are applied to achieve it in various expressions (Reisigl and Wodak
2015, 88).

CDS can be defined as fundamentally interested in analysing hidden,

opaque, and visible structures of dominance, discrimination, power and
control as manifested in the language. In other words, CDS aims to investi-
gate critically social inequality as it is expressed, constituted, legitimised, and
so on, by language use or in discourse. Most critical discourse analysts would
thus endorse Habermas’s claim that ‘language is also a medium of
­domination and social force. It serves to legitimise relations of organised
power. Insofar as the legitimation of power relations … are not articu-
lated … language is also ideological’. (Habermas 2015, 130 in Wodak and
Meyer 2015, 12)
 2 APPROACHING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EURO CRISIS 23

The most common definition of ideology sees it as “a coherent and rela-

tively stable set of beliefs or values” (Wodak and Meyer 2015, 8). Yet,
according to Althusser, whose ideas on the notions of ideology have also
been very influential in CDS, ideology is not “just” a dominant system of
ideas and beliefs but “represent[s] the imaginary relationship of individu-
als to their real conditions of existence’ which ‘has a material existence’ ”
(Althusser 2001, 109). For Althusser, discursive practices can be explored
as material forms of ideology (Fairclough 2013, 102–108; also Chouliaraki
and Fairclough 2007).
Elsewhere, van Dijk defines ideologies as the worldviews that constitute
social cognition: “schematically organised complexes of representations
and attitudes with regard to certain aspects of social world” (van Dijk
1998, 258). In his view, ideology is a system of meanings, values and
beliefs that govern the way people perceive their world and themselves.
Van Dijk claims that ideologies can be defined as “the basis for the social
representations shared by members of the group”, while language use
plays a significant role in their reproduction (van Dijk 1998, 263–276).
Similarly, for Wodak and Meyer, ideology is seen as:

an (often) one-sided perspective or world view composed of related mental

representations, convictions, opinions, attitudes and evaluations, which is
shared by members of a specific social group. Ideologies serve as an impor-
tant means of establishing and maintaining unequal power relations through
discourse: for example, by establishing hegemonic identity narratives, or by
controlling the access to specific discourses or public spheres. In addition,
ideologies also function as a means of transforming power relations. (Reisigl
and Wodak 2015, 88)

On the other hand, Fairclough conceives ideology as “construction of

practices from particular perspective” (Fairclough 2013, 71), which con-
tributes to establishing and maintaining relations of power, domination
and exploitation. For Fairclough, the analysis of texts is an important
aspect of ideological analysis and critique as the ideological meanings car-
ried in the discourse are usually implied or presupposed. “Texts do not
typically spout ideology. They so position the interpreter though their
cues that she or he brings ideologies to the interpretation of texts—and
reproduces them in process” (Fairclough 2013, 71).
Consequently, CDA researchers agree that ideology serves as a set of
internalised representations that govern the perception of power relations.
24 K. SOBIERAJ

Dominant ideologies may appear as “neutral”, linked to assumptions that

often remain unchallenged, explicitly or implicitly expressed in many ways
in discourse (Wodak and Meyer 2015, 5). Therefore, CDS is particularly
interested in the ideologies hidden and inherent in everyday beliefs, which
often appear disguised, for instance, in conceptual metaphors and analo-
gies (Lakoff and Johnson 2003). It is the functioning of ideologies and
the role they play in public debate which interests CDS researchers. Thus,
one of the aims of the critical discourse researcher, according to Wodak
and Meyer, is to

‘demystify’ the hegemony of specific discourses by deciphering the ideolo-

gies that establish, perpetuate or fight dominance for language is not power-
ful on its own—it is a means to gain and maintain power by the use powerful
people make of it. Therefore, CDS critically analyses the language use of
those in power who have the means and opportunities to improve condi-
tions. (Reisigl and Wodak 2015, 88)

When it comes to neoliberalism as an ideology, it is contemporarily

often referred to a set of market-oriented reform policies introduced by
Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the
United States from the mid-1970s. It aimed at reducing state functions
and state intervention in the economy. Therefore, these power relations in
the context of neoliberalism are defined as power of banks and corpora-
tions over ordinary citizens.
David Harvey described neoliberalism as a class project implemented
by the corporate capitalist class, and argues in his book A Brief History of
Neoliberalism that neoliberalism has been designed to increase the power
of economic elites (Harvey 2011). Economist David M. Kotz contends in
his book The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism that neoliberalism is
based on the thorough domination of capital over labour and shifts wealth
to the upper classes (Kotz 2015).
One of my goals in this book is to show how different worldviews, ide-
ologies and power relations were mediatised and expressed textually in the
media discourse on the Euro crisis, and what impact they had on the social
perception of the crisis.
 2 APPROACHING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EURO CRISIS 25

Notions of Text, Discourse and Context

The term discourse is used in various ways across the social sciences. Being
located within social constructivist paradigm, CDS sees discourse as a
form of social practice (Wodak and Fairclough 1997) and considers the
context of language use to be crucial (Wodak and Meyer 2015, 5).

This implies a dialectical relationship between a particular discursive event

and all the diverse elements of the situations, institutions, and social struc-
tures which frame it. A dialectical relationship is a two way relationship: the
discursive event is shaped by situations, institutions and social structures,
but it also shapes them. To put in a different way, discourse is socially con-
stitutive as well as socially shaped. (Wodak 2013, 79–80)

Furthermore, the notion of discourse is distinguished from the notion

of text. “Texts constitute parts of discourses. They make speech acts dura-
ble over time and thus link speech production with speech reception. In
other words, texts—be they visualised and written or oral—objectify lin-
guistic actions” (Reisigl and Wodak 2015, 89–90).
Discourses are additionally historical and therefore cannot be fully
understood without reference to their various contexts. They are linked to
other discourses, which were produced earlier, around the same time or
later. In this respect, the notions of intertextuality and interdiscursivity
become of crucial importance for CDA with regard to the analysis of the
relationships with other texts. Moreover, the notion of context in CDS
includes, among others, sociopsychological, political, historical and ideo-
logical factors, and thereby postulates interdisciplinarity (Wodak
2013, 94).

Media Models and Crises

The structures of the media systems in the countries of analysis—Poland,
Germany and the United Kingdom play specific roles in the context of
discourse. One of my aims is to investigate whether the structure of media
markets influenced the coverage and the way in which the discourse on the
Euro crisis has been shaped in the countries under analysis.
Typologies of media systems have been an underlying part of media
comparative analysis since the publication of Four Theories of the Press
(Siebert et al. 1984). Hallin and Mancini’s system of categorisation
26 K. SOBIERAJ

developed in Comparing Media Systems (2004) set the tone for most post-­
Four Theories research on types of media systems and despite criticism and
limitations, still remains “the most well-developed analytical framework so
far for understanding the relationship between media and political sys-
tems” (Hardy 2008, 232) and has been therefore used in this book to
analyse the media markets of Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom.
It conceptualised three models of relations between media and the politi-
cal system in which they function corresponding to geographical regions:

1. The North Atlantic or Liberal Model (incl. UK);

2. The North/Central Europe or Democratic Corporatist Model (incl.
Germany);
3. The Mediterranean or Polarised Pluralist Model.

The three countries under analysis in this book represent different

media models in the above classification but also point to the limitations
in their application.
The UK system is comprised within the Liberal or North Atlantic
model and is characterised by early development of press freedom, a high
level of press circulation, high journalistic professionalism, mostly neu-
trally oriented press, the absence of state intervention and weak party
organisation. Liberal institutions, which developed relatively early in the
UK, preserved a traditionally strong role of the market and a relatively
limited role of the state in this model. That is why despite a strong profes-
sionalisation, in the Liberal model, journalism can be limited by commer-
cial rather than by political interests (Hallin and Mancini 2004, 75, 246).
All the Liberal countries are characterised by moderate pluralism and
tend towards majoritarianism, while rational-legal authority is strongly
developed. The media have been largely separated institutionally from
political parties and other organised social groups, since the late nine-
teenth century. However, the high partisanship of the press is what distin-
guishes the UK model from other countries in this group. Also, news
journalism became predominant, with a strong commentary tradition in
Britain, and the state intervention in the media sector has been generally
limited in comparison with the Democratic Corporatist or Polarised
Pluralist systems, even though in Britain public broadcasting and the regu-
lation of commercial broadcasting have both been very strong (Hallin and
Mancini 2004, 75, 246).
 2 APPROACHING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EURO CRISIS 27

Germany on the other hand represents the Democratic-Corporatist or

North/Central Europe model, which is characterised by large press circu-
lation, a certain level of press partisanship and therefore political parallel-
ism. It is based on merit selection criteria and career improvement, as well
as a rooted tradition of state intervention with policies of press subsidies
rather than strong party organisations (Hallin and Mancini 2004,
195–196; Konarska 2018, 114).
As in the Liberal model, press freedom and the newspaper industry
developed early in North Central European countries as a result of the
Protestant Reformation. Rates of newspaper readership are still very high
today in these countries. However, unlike the Liberal model, it is charac-
terised by a history of strong party newspapers, and thus a political press
strongly linked to the interests of distinct social groups often coexists with
the commercial press (Hallin and Mancini 2004, 195–196).
Commentary-oriented journalism dominates the market and is accom-
panied by a growing emphasis on values of professionalism and information-­
oriented journalism. In the Democratic-Corporatist model, the media are
seen to a large extent as social institutions under the responsibility of the
state that provides support and regulation (Hallin and Mancini 2004, 74).
In a further study on the Hallin and Mancini’s models, Brüggemann
et al. (2014) found that the Democratic Corporatist model corresponds
actually to two empirical types: the Northern type, comprising the Nordic
countries, and the Central type, which included Germany, among others.
Brüggemann et al. attributed the splitting of the Democratic Corporatist
model to differences in the role of the state. While the Northern systems
display strong press subsidies but little ownership regulation, in Germany
we can find high levels of state intervention with regard to ownership
regulation and broadcasting but low levels in terms of press subsidies
(Brüggemann 1058). In contrast to the two models described above, in
Southern Europe, a media system closely linked to politics has been cre-
ated. The Polarised Pluralist or Mediterranean model that dominates in
France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain is characterised by low levels of
press circulation, low levels of rational-legal authority, a tradition of clien-
telism, the existence of an elite-oriented press, and media instrumentalisa-
tion that accompany strong and rooted political organisations (Mancini
2015, 32).
In the Mediterranean countries, the commercial press is weaker than in
either the Liberal or Democratic Corporatist systems. Newspaper circula-
tion is relatively low and electronic media occupy the central stage. Political
28 K. SOBIERAJ

parallelism in the Polarised Pluralist model tends to be high with press

often focusing on political life. Commentary-oriented and advocacy-­
centred journalism is stronger than in other parts of Europe. Also, journal-
istic professionalism is not as much in the centre of attention compared
with the Liberal or Democratic Corporatist systems. As there is not clear
differentiation between journalisms and political activism, political loyal-
ties often take over commitments to professional norms and values. The
state plays an interventionist role as an owner, regulator and provider of
funds for media outlets, though its capacity to regulate effectively is often
limited with an exception of France. The instrumentalisation of the media
by the state, political parties and private owners who have political ties is
also relatively frequent (Hallin and Mancini 2004, 73, 138–139).
While the United Kingdom and Germany are located in the Liberal and
the Democratic-Corporatist models, respectively, Poland which is situated
in Central Eastern Europe does not let itself be easily classified into one of
the three models. Hallin and Mancini’s framework cannot be easily and
unconditionally applied to fully explain journalistic practices and the rela-
tionship between the political and media systems in Poland.
Following a substantial critique regarding the limited application of the
models to countries outside of Western Europe, Hallin and Mancini incor-
porated a broader and more global perspective in Comparing Media
Systems Beyond the Western World (2012), as well as a methodological
reflection on the relation and applicability of their framework to non-­
Western media systems. Further research was also conducted among oth-
ers by Jonathan Hardy (2008), who analysed the impact of transformation
processes on the shape of contemporary media systems and Roger Blum
(2005) who attempted to adapt and complete Hallin and Mancini’s mod-
els by modifying the media market dimensions that they proposed. Finally,
Dobek-Ostrowska applied Hallin and Mancini’s framework to Central and
Eastern Europe media systems in her volume titled Comparative Media
Systems: European and Global Perspective (2010).
Zielonka underlines that in the Central Eastern Europe (CEE) region
the position of key actors in media systems is specifically determined by a
combination of local and global factors (glocalism) (Zielonka 2015, 6).
Similarly, Mancini claims that with some major divergences among differ-
ent countries CEE presents a model characterised on the one hand by
external influences and also by imitation attempts, and domestic condi-
tions. Therefore, a concept of hybridisation, as merging elements from
different models, seems to be more suited to understand media system in
 2 APPROACHING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EURO CRISIS 29

CEE (Mancini 2015, 26, 36) and results in quite a different model from
what can be observed in established democracies. The categories derived
from the analysis of Western media systems do not easily apply to CEE
countries, and are not sufficient to explain in full what constitutes journal-
istic practices in the region (Mancini 2015, 32, 36).
Poland, the largest market in Central Eastern Europe, resembles a
hybrid model, based on the Polarised Pluralist and Liberal models, with a
few elements of the Democratic Corporatist model. In the interwar period,
the Polish media system could have been best situated within Hallin and
Mancini’s Polarised Pluralist and Democratic Corporatist model with
polarised pluralism, political and literary roots of journalism, and limited
access to or lack of commercial and popular newspapers.

As in Southern Europe, mass-circulation newspapers never developed.

However, features characteristic of the Democratic-Corporatist model, such
as “critical professionalism” of journalists linked with political parties, well-­
organised formal education in journalism, strong professional associations,
and a relatively high level of journalistic autonomy, also developed in the
interwar Polish press. (Dobek-Ostrowska 2012, 28–29)

However, with the communists taking over in Poland after World War
II, the Soviet press model replaced the external pluralist model in Central
Eastern Europe. In the early 1990s, following the collapse of communism,
the Polish media system began to undergo a deep structural transforma-
tion to an independent and free media market, which was aimed to present
“reliable and possibly full and objective information, express social opin-
ions, hold authorities accountable, and protect civil liberties, contribute to
democratic reforms”. They were envisaged to be based on freedom of
speech and pluralism (Pokorna-Ignatowicz 2013, 31). Additionally, an
intense process of privatisation, involving foreign ownership and the tech-
nology transfer from the West, competition, commercialisation and tab-
loidisation facilitated an evolution of the Polish media system towards the
Liberal model.
One of the key differentiating factors of CEE, including Poland, from
Western democracies lies in the media ownership which, as a result of the
transition from communism to market economy, involved a massive trans-
fer of property from the public to the private sector. As noted by Zielonka,
in many cases, this transfer was not transparent and resulted in growing
ownership concentration in the region. With pluralistic markets becoming
30 K. SOBIERAJ

public and private duopolies, external media groups took over large part
of the media in the region. They generated a transfer of Western technol-
ogy and know-how to CEE, but also commercialised journalistic output.
Consequently, the public sector has shrunk and fused with the private.
Public television remained largely dependent on advertising revenues from
the private sector, and no public subsidies remain available for the press
(Zielonka 2015, 6–7; Dobek-Ostrowska 2012, 31).
According to Dobek-Ostrowska, the Polish media landscape today is a
product of these processes and can be understood as a hybrid of the Liberal
and Polarised Pluralist models, along with a few elements of the Democratic
Corporatist model and the country’s post-communist legacy.

Certainly it has many characteristics of the Polarised Pluralist model. The

system is characterised by a small circulation of daily newspapers and the
central position of the electronic media. The media, above all the press,
strongly focus on political life, and external pluralism and the tradition of
commentary-oriented journalism are important. Instrumentalisation of the
public broadcasting media by the government and political parties is evi-
dent. Journalistic professionalism is at a lower level than in the Democratic
Corporatist or the Liberal model. Relationships between the media and
political elites are characterised mainly by conflicts over the autonomy of
journalism. The state plays a significant role as the owner of public radio and
television. (Dobek-Ostrowska 2012, 49)

The large majority of the market is owned by conglomerates such as

H. Bauer (operating in Poland as Wydawnictwo Bauer LTD), Verlagsgruppe
Passau (Polskapresse), Axel Springer (Axel Springer Polska LTD), or
Norwegian Orkla Press (Presspublica). Agora S.A is the only among
domestic outlets able to compete with the top foreign companies
(“National Media Profiles: Poland” 2017).
However, with the Euro crisis, foreign media owners began to with-
draw from CEE. Their place has been largely filled by local oligarchs, who
have had different objectives. For them, media are not necessarily expected
to generate financial profits, but to help their owners’ businesses and to
enhance their political influence, which brings CEE closer to the
Mediterranean model. Especially for new parties in young democracies
media presence is the key way to win elections, by publicising and “sell-
ing” their programs to the electorate through the media. This results in
the powerful leverage that media have over the parties, but it also tempts
 2 APPROACHING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EURO CRISIS 31

political parties to control the media for their own needs (Zielonka 2015,
6–7; Dobek-Ostrowska 2012, 44).
Today, there’s a tendency to mix the Liberal model with the Polarised
Pluralist model in this region of Europe, and the media systems in Poland
and other countries in Eastern and Central Europe are affected by the
same processes of change as their Western European counterparts, includ-
ing strong neoliberal tendencies (Dobek-Ostrowska 2012, 49). The dif-
ferences are becoming smaller and the emerging global media culture
tends towards the Liberal Model that involves the homogenisation of
media systems and their messages (Hallin and Mancini 2004, 294). I will
investigate this in the context of the reporting on the Euro crisis and
explore whether the media–state relation has an impact on how the Euro
crisis has been reported in the daily press.

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
the weeks consumed by the trip, an existence which must have been
somewhat like that of Noah’s family in the Ark.
There was not, as I have mentioned, any means of keeping foods
fresh, nor was there even ice water to be had on those boats. We
used entirely, even for drinking, the muddy river water, which was
hauled up in buckets on the barber side of the boat, while the
steward was emptying refuse to the fishes on the pantry side. The
passengers became more or less intimate, necessarily, on a trip
such as I am attempting to describe. There was no place to sit but in
the general cabin, the sleeping rooms being so cramped. There was
no library, very little reading, but much fancy work, mostly on canvas,
footstools and bell-pulls. A bell-pull, you may want to know, was a
long band about three inches wide; it was hung from the parlor
cornice and connected with a bell in the servant’s region; it was quite
the style to embroider them in gay vines and flower designs.
The elderly ladies knit fine thread nightcaps, collars and lace.
Really some of the “old lady” work was quite handsome. Thus
fingers were kept busy, while gossip and interchange of bread and
cake recipes entertained the housewives who had never heard of
cooking schools and domestic science. Our trip necessarily
embraced at least one Sunday. I remember my father had a dear old
relative of the deepest dyed Presbyterian type (father of the late Dr.
T. G. Richardson), who always on his river trips landed wherever he
happened to be on Saturday and on Monday boarded another boat
(if one came along), his scruples forbidding Sunday travel.
 American Stagecoach.

(From “Forty Etchings, from Sketches Made with the Camera Lucida in North
America in 1827 and 1828,” by Captain Basil Hall, R. N.)

Arrived at the end of our river journey, father chartered a whole

stage to take his family a two days’ trip into the heart of the blue
grass region. Nine passengers filled the interior of the coach, and
four or five, if need be, could ride on top. The rumble (we always
called it boot) was filled with baggage. The vehicle had no springs,
but was swung on braces, which gave it a kind of swaying motion
that always made me sick. However, we managed to start off in fine
style, but every time there was a stop to change horses all of us
alighted, stiff and tired and hot, to “stretch our legs,” like Squeers in
Dickens’ “Nicholas Nickleby.” At noon we rejoiced to hear our
coachman’s horn, a grand, loud blast, followed by toot, toot!—one
toot for each passenger, so the tavern man would know how many
plates to lay, and his wife how many biscuits and chicken legs to
have ready. We always made out to spend the one night of the
journey at Weissiger’s tavern in Frankfort, the best tavern in all the
land. We had a leisurely breakfast the following morning and were
refreshed in body and soul for the last lap of our journey.
Late afternoon the stage winds up a hill, and in a woods pasture
and surrounded by blue grass meadows the gable end of a red brick
house can be seen. My dear, tired mother puts her head out of the
window, “Driver, blow your horn.” A great blast sounds over the
waving grass and blossoming fields, and we know that they know we
are coming. Tired as the horses are after the long, hard pull; tired as
the coachman must be, he cracks his whip, and we gallop up the
shady lane to the dear old door as briskly as though we were fresh
from the stable. Long before we are fully there, and the steps of the
nine-passenger coach can be lowered; long before the boys can
jump off the top, a host of dear faces, both white and black, is
assembled to greet us. As a little child I always wondered why it was,
when the occasion was so joyful, and all of us tumbled from that
stage so beaming and happy, that as my aunt folded my mother in
her arms, they both wept such copious tears. Now I know.
 XX
HOTEL AT PASS CHRISTIAN IN 1849

If there is a more restful spot on earth than a comfortable rocking-

chair on a deep veranda, with a nearby view of the dancing waters of
the gulf through a grove of tall pines, commend me to it. A whole
month on the west coast of Florida, all sand underfoot, pines and
oaks overhead, is ideal for fagged-out, tired-out, frayed-out humanity
from busy cities. This is not an advertisement, so I do not propose to
tell where six people from six different and widely separated parts of
the country last year dropped down from the skies, as it were, upon
just such a delightful straight mile of gulf coast.
One halts at a “turpentine depot” and takes a queer little tram to
the Gulf, seven miles away. Tram is hauled over wooden rails by two
tired nags whose motions suggest the lazy air of the pines. It is
loaded with the baggage—crates of hunting dogs—(fine hunting
abounds), the mail bag, some miscellaneous freight and finally the
passengers.
The country hotel is pine; ceilings, floors, walls are pine, the home-
made and built-in furniture is pine; a big fire, roaring in the open
fireplace if the day is chilly, is also made of pine—the rich, red
Florida pine, ever so much richer in color and in turpentine than the
boasted Georgia article. With the fish swimming in front of this hotel
and the birds flying behind, and rabbits running in both directions, it
goes without saying the table is above the average.
Here on the broad verandas, as we rock and dream the lazy days
away, visions visit me of the old hotel at Pass Christian in the forties.
The oaks and three China trees in front of the veranda, and the view
of the nearby waters, the whistle of mocking-birds among the china
berries (thank heaven! sparrows have not found this Elysium) lend
additional force to the semblance. One old lady, who hunts not,
neither does she fish, rocks on the sunny veranda and dreams, as is
the wont of those who have lived beyond their day and generation.
She brings forth from a long-forgotten corner of memory’s closet a
picture covered with the dust of years, and lovingly brushes away the
dimness, when behold! old Pass Christian, dear old Pass Christian,
before the day of railroads and summer cottages, before the day of 6
o’clock dinners and trailing skirts, of cotillion favors and abbreviated
bathing suits.
The old hotel was built with a wing or extension at each end, which
formed with the main building three sides of a square. There was no
attempt at landscape gardening; not even a rosebush or an oleander
decorated the little court. No plaster Apollos and Dianas such as
were seen peeping about the shrubbery of the various cottages (like
the De Blancs’ and Ducayets’) that dotted in those days the old
bayou road, and were considered so very decorative, but plain sand
and scrub such as meet my eye to-day on this little frequented part
of the Florida Gulf Coast. There was no beach driving or riding of
gay people then—none here now.
I fly back to the summer of ’49, and live again with the young girls
who made life one long summer’s day. We walked the pier, the
image of one before my eyes now, to the bath-houses in muslin
dresses. Bathing suits were hideous, unsightly garments, high neck,
long sleeves, long skirts, intended for water only! The young girls
returned under parasols and veils. How decorous! No baigneuse
decolletée to be seen on the beach. Our amusements were simple
and distinctly ladylike. There was no golf or tennis, not even the
innocent croquet, to tempt the demoiselles to athletics, so they
drifted more to the “Lydia Languish” style.
There was no lack of beaux who came, more than enough to “go
round,” by the Saturday boats, in time for the weekly hop—danced
all Saturday night and returned to weekly drudge (as they called it) in
the city. The bonbons and flowers they brought vanished and faded
long before the little boat with its freight of waving hats and
handkerchiefs faded in the twilight of a summer Sunday.
 Also there come to my dream two dainty Goodman sisters,
wonderful and most accommodating musicians they were. One was
already affianced to her cousin, George Nathan. He was a
prosperous business man at that time. I doubt if even his name is
known among his thrifty race in New Orleans to-day. He carried off
his accomplished wife to Rio Janeiro, and made his home in that
country, which was as far away to us then, as the North Pole is to-
day. The younger sister met that summer at the Pass and eventually
married E. C. Wharton, an attaché of the Picayune, whose articles
were signed “Easy Doubleyou.” He was soon dancing attendance on
the pretty, curly haired girl. I remember how he wandered around
with pad and pencil, and we girls were horribly afraid of being put in
the Picayune. No reason for fear, as it was before the dawn of the
society page and personal column. The Whartons drifted to Texas
during the war, and at Houston they found already a host of stranded
Louisianians; but “Easy Doubleyou” had a government appointment
of some kind. The rest of us were simply runaways.
There, too, was Dick Taylor, propelled in a wheel chair over that
hotel veranda, an interesting convalescent from severe illness, or
perhaps a wound, I do not recall which, his valet so constant in
attendance that we wondered how the young man ever got an
opportunity to whisper sweet nothings into the ear of lovely Myrtle
Bringier—but he did! And that was the fourth engagement of the
season that culminated in marriage, which signalizes the superior
advantages of a hotel veranda, and most especially that of dear old
Pass Christian. Dick Taylor had a magnetic personality, which
overshadowed the fact (to paraphrase a Bible text) he was the only
son of his father, and he the President.
In New York some years ago “The Little Church Around the
Corner,” still garnished with its wealth of Easter lilies and fragrant
with spring bloom, threw wide its portals for the last obsequies of this
loved and honored Confederate general. In that throng of mourners
was one who had known him in his early manhood on the veranda of
that old Pass Christian hotel, and whose heart had followed his
career with ever-increasing admiration and veneration even unto the
end. I lay aside my old picture forever. Alas! it remains “only a dream
at the best, but so sweet that I ask for no more.”
 XXI
OLD MUSIC BOOKS

I wonder how many old ladies start to go through an unused hall

closet, to make room for an accumulation of pasteboard boxes too
good to throw away, and hampers too strong to discard, and in that
long-closed closet, which a junk man with push-cart is waiting to help
clear out, find a treasure, long since buried under piles of trash,
mourned for, and, as in the case of many departed things, at length
given up for lost—then forgotten. In just such a dark closet, from
beneath a pile of old magazines (what they were kept and stored for
goodness knows) and crazy bits of bric-a-brac, that nobody but a
junk man (not even Salvation Army men, who are getting to be
mighty choosy, by the way) would cart off, I found two bruised music
books.
One dated back to 1847, when I was a schoolgirl in New Haven,
and played with great éclat “La Fête au Couvent” quadrilles,
purchased of Skinner & Co., Chapel Street. Chapel Street still exists,
but Skinner & Co. are buried in the dust of more than sixty years. I
cannot play “La Fête au Couvent” or any other fête now, but I can
close my eyes and see the lovely young girls in the school music
room whirling away to the music of the inspiring cotillion. Alas! Alas!
Time has whirled every one of them away and stiffened the nimble
fingers that danced so merrily over the keys.
In those far away days that are as yesterday to my dreaming there
were “Variations” of every familiar melody. Variations that started with
the simple air and branched off into all sorts of fantastic and involved
and intricate paths. “Oft in the Stilly Night,” “’Tis Midnight Hour,”
“Twilight Dews,” “Low-Back’d Car,” “The Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s
Halls,” “Oh, Cast That Shadow From Thy Brow,” and so on and on,
whole pages of “Variations,” now dim with age, but every blessed
note brings to me the faces and voices of those long stilled in death.
One sweet young girl played “The Harp That Once Thro’ Tara’s
Halls” and “’Tis Midnight Hour” so charmingly that my eyes were
dimmed when I turned the leaves of the school-day music book, for
her fate was saddest of all—an inmate for years of an insane
asylum. Another who sang as she played the “Low-Back’d Car” so
delightfully (she was half Irish) died suddenly of yellow fever. Still
another associated with “Oh, Cast That Shadow From Thy Brow,”
played the melody on a guitar, accompanied by her sweet young
voice. Alas! She, too, is gone where they play on harps and there are
no shadowed brows. So, on and on to the bitter end, and with a sigh
I close the first chapter of my musical reminiscences that have lain
dormant so many, many years.
The fashion of dedicating bits of music to some well-known person
—need not be a musician, either, but a body of some note—has
passed away with the one-button glove and the green barège veil of
sixty years ago. In the ’50s it was quite common, and my dear music
book of that date holds ever so many dedicated polkas and
mazourkas. The very front leaf has a picture of a wonderfully
crocheted kind of a serpent with a man’s head, rather a shocking
thing, “Sea Serpent Polka,” dedicated to Miss Rose Kennedy, by M.
Strakosch. Dear Rose used to play it for us. It was not an inspiring
bit of music, but her wonderfully deft touch would make melody out
of anything that had crochets and quavers in it.
There is, a few pages further, another dedication to the
incomparable Rose, “Grande Polka de Concert,” by Wallace. Miss
Lou Gross, a most accomplished musician, daughter of the noted
surgeon, Dr. Samuel Gross, was honored by Strakosch in the
“Kossuth Galop,” a galloping thing, much in the Strakosch style,
which predominated in those days. Strakosch believed in a grand
“send off” of his innumerable productions. There’s “Carnival de
Paris,” dedicated to Mme. Caroline Arpin (I did not know of her) and
“Flirtation Polka,” to Mme. Lavillebeuvre, who was a delightful pianist
and merited something more inspiring than that “Flirtation.”
Then Wallace dances on the pages with a “Polka” adorned with
the name of Mlle. Dumilatre, and Ed Armant dedicates “La Rose
Polka” to Miss Augusta Slocomb. I don’t think Armant wrote music;
he “got it done,” as the saying is. That was not an unusual feat; a
valse was dedicated to Miss Philomène Briant, by George
McCausland, and he was ignorant of a note in music—he “got it
done.” P. A. Frigerio honored Miss Sara Byrne by the dedication of
“La Chasse Polka.” Miss Sara was a decided belle in the ’50s, so a
bit of music with her name attached found rapid disposal. Also, a
belle of the ’50s was Miss Estelle Tricou. Lehman, chef d’orchestre
at the opera house, wrote “Souvenir de Paris” in her honor. Miss
Estelle was bright and sparkling and beautiful, so was much in
evidence. George W. Christy wrote more than one of his “starry”
verses to “E. T.,” and they were printed in the Picayune. George was
not noted for self-effacement and modesty. His signature always
appeared in full to his sentimental effusions.
Lehman dedicated his “Clochettes Polka Mazourka,” a fine,
inspiring bit of dance music it was, too, to Mme. Odile Ferrier, and
“La Valentine Polka,” another charming, catchy dance piece, to Miss
Anaïs Boudousquie. There was Mme. Angélina, a new French
importation, whose specialty was the new dances that nobody else
could teach. She was immortalized by “L’Esmeralda Nouvelle Danse
de Salon.” We pupils had to learn some new steps and flourishes to
be able to make successful début, after All Saints’ Day, for it was
decreed “L’Esmeralda” was to be most popular. Everybody, even
some stout old ladies that did not mean to be relegated to back
seats, and passé beaux who were fast becoming clumsy and awfully
hard to dance with, took dancing lessons on the sly of Mme.
Angélina, not to mention the young girls, débutantes and such, that
went in small installments to her tiny room in Royal Street....
After this seeming digression I turn a leaf in the old music book to
dedications to Mme. Boyer, “Mazourka Sentimentale,” by the fertile
Strakosch, and here, too, “La Valse Autrichienne” by a new name—
E. Johns. Mme. Boyer was the fashionable teacher of music. Both
these dedicated pieces we scholars had to learn, and both bits,
besides a dozen other bits a thousand times more difficult and
intricate, like Gottschalk’s “Bamboula,” for instance, are so spotted
with black pencil marks they are a sight! For the madame did not
make a suggestion as to technique or expression or anything else in
the musical mind that was not emphasized by a pencil mark on the
page.
I find that most of this music was published by Mayo, No. 5 Camp
Street; by Lyler & Hewitt, 39 Camp Street. Lehman published his
own work at 194 St. Anne Street.... I am not half through, but I am
weary of looking over these old music books. So many memories
cluster about every page—memories of lovely dances with delightful
partners. Oh! That grand valse à cinq temps, the music of which was
never printed, and no band but Lehman’s band could play it, and
nobody taught the whirling steps but Mme. Angélina. Memories of
sweet girls, now old and faded, or, better than that, listening to the
“Music of the Spheres.” Memories of painstaking professors whose
pencil marks are all that is left to bring forcibly to mind their patient
personality. I turn the last leaf, and lo! here is a unique bit of music
and information—“The Monterey Waltz,” by Eugene Wythe Dawson,
a little Texas boy, who dedicates it to the little musicians of his own
age (eight years) in the sister States! I do not remember anyone who
essayed to render the “Monterey Waltz”—I never did—but Eugene
Dawson was still playing the piano in Texas during the war, proving
possibly our grandfather’s dictum, “A man who plays the piano is
mighty little account for anything else.”
We don’t think so now. I would be glad for a musician, male or
female, in this house to render for me the sweet musical numbers
that once made my young heart bound.
 XXII
THE SONGS OF LONG AGO

How the ballads of our youth are, in memory, merged into the
personality of those who sang them! How, as we recall the simple
rhymes, the sweet voices of departed friends clothe them in melody.
The songs of my early years come to me to-day with more freshness
than the songs I heard yesterday, and with them come more vividly
to mind the voices and faces of those long-gone friends than come
the faces of those of to-day.
How many of us can recall “Blue-eyed Mary”? the little ballad with
which my mother always quieted me to rest. The pitiful little song!
And in my childhood days, too, mammy rocked me to sleep with “Ole
Grimes is daid, dat good ole man.” I never hear “Blue-eyed Mary” or
“Old Grimes” now, nor have I for more than threescore years and
ten, they are both so buried in oblivion, though I can repeat every
word of each, they were so nestled and rocked into my baby life.
When my father’s home was on Customhouse Street Duncan
Hennen lived directly opposite. Mrs. Hennen was a dashing beauty.
She had a sister from Tennessee visiting her, who had a powerful
voice, and she sang “Old Rosin the Beau” and “Life on the Ocean
Wave” with all the abandon of a professional. My father admired her
style prodigiously, but my mother thought it too robust. “The Carrier
Dove—fly away to my native land, sweet dove,” and “Twilight Dews,”
she pronounced more ladylike. (How often we used that word
“ladylike.” We rarely hear it now.) I must have been a very small “little
girl” when I heard Wallace, in concert, sing “The Old Arm Chair.” No
one since Wallace ever sung that touching, homely ballad so
beautifully. Once having heard his sympathetic rendering, one
always associates the song with William Wallace.
 I think it has been full sixty years since that song and “Farewell to
Tom Moore,” by Byron, have been heard. And “Twilight Dews,” oh,
my! and “Shells of the Ocean”—“One summer’s day in pensive
thought,” etc. Young girls played their accompaniments and tossed
their ringlets and sang those ditties to enraptured swains, who often
stood back of them, holding the candle at the proper angle and
turning the leaves! How it all comes back to this dreaming old lady,
who never sang, but who dearly loved to listen to her more gifted
friends....
In the Cajin settlement on the border of which I occasionally visited
there was a family of Lafitons—I boldly give the name, for the two
sons, Lafiton fils and Pete, never married, and all the family died
years and years ago, but there was a lovely sprig of a girl,
Amenaide, who possessed a fine voice and no doubt would have
made her mark if she had had the necessary training, but she was
one of the flowers “born to blush unseen.” I don’t think she knew one
note of music. Of course, a guitar, much more a piano, was beyond
her reach. She sang the sweet old French melody, “Fleuve du Tage,”
delightfully. I wonder now where she ever heard it. For years after
when I heard the song Amenaide rose before me, and with her the
impression that she was not equaled.
There was another touching little ballad, in the days that were,
“We Have Been Friends Together,” and that tender “Good-by,” who
ever sings them now? Nobody, unless it be some old lady with
quavering voice, who sings them in her heart while she dreams of
the sweet girls of “Long, long ago” who have vanished.
“I Cannot Sing the Old Songs,” and “When Stars Are in the Quiet
Skies” were two of the songs we loved to hear in the days before
“Dixie” and “The Volunteer” and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” captured the
voices of so many of our sweet singers.
Some of us remember Mollie Haynes, who became the wife of
Col. Charles D. Dreux, and none can recall her charming personality
without a thought of the superb voice she possessed. “Ave Maria,
Ora Pro Nobis”—none that I knew could render that prayerful melody
with the pathos of Mollie Dreux. We all remember that Col. Dreux
was the first Confederate officer from Louisiana who fell in battle,
and no subsequent funeral was more largely attended than was
Charles Dreux’s. “Joys That We’ve Tasted” brings to mind a popular
singer in the “Long Time Ago,” Mrs. George D. Prentice, of Kentucky.
How the names and the very people come thronging my mind as I
recall these old melodies in which they are associated.
A few years since, listening to the well-trained voice of a
professional, as she rendered some intricate, superlative kind of
music, that did not in the least appeal to me, I ventured to ask if she
would favor us with “Ben Bolt.” She graciously consented. And she
rendered that simple old ballad that every child whistled or hummed
when I was a child, with so many trills and bravuras, and I don’t
know what else in the vocal line, that I was lost in amazement.
Svengali himself could not have idealized to the same extent. Poor
“Sweet Alice” was buried under such an avalanche of sound that one
could not recognize the “corner, obscure and alone,” where she was
supposed to rest under a “slab of granite so gray.”
So, perhaps, in the march of improvement, where none sing
unless they possess a voice that would electrify a whole opera
house audience, it is well the dear old songs of long ago are not
resurrected and amplified to suit the tastes and requirements of to-
day. I recall though, with a thrill of tender memory, hearing Jenny
Lind sing “Home, Sweet Home”—just the simple ballad—without a
single flourish when she was in New Orleans in 1851. I was in deep
mourning and did not dream I would have the pleasure of hearing
her, but a friend secured a loge grillée, and insisted upon my going,
accompanied by my brother. It was all arranged so courteously and
so sympathetically and so kindly that I could not refuse, and thus I
heard that incomparable artist sing “Home, Sweet Home.”
No longer can mother sit in her “old arm chair” waving a turkey tail
fan warm summer evenings, and be comforted and soothed by
sweet warblings of her girls at the piano. No longer can the tired
father call for his favorite, “Oh! Would I Were a Boy Again,” or “Rock
Me to Sleep, Mother,” or Mrs. Hemans’ “Bring Flowers, Fresh
Flowers,” the sweet old flowers that all girls were singing sixty years
ago. The old mothers and fathers, the bright young daughters are
scarce buried more deeply or mourned more deeply than are the
songs of long ago.
 XXIII
A RAMBLE THROUGH THE OLD CITY

In the days of which I write New Orleans bore a very different

aspect from the present, and it may be well for me to take my
readers on a gossipy ramble through the thoroughfares which I so
often traverse nowadays in my thoughts.
Canal Street in the early forties was, par excellence, a resident
street. From Camp and Chartres Streets, way back as far as
sidewalks were flagged or bricked, which was only a few blocks,
Canal Street was lined with homes, side by side, often without even
an alley to separate them, as though land was scarce and one need
economize space, whereas just beyond was land in plenty, but no
sidewalks or easy approaches to speak of. From Camp Street to the
levee were, as I remember, large wholesale business houses,
convenient to the shoppers of large supplies, who arrived at regular
intervals from their plantations on Belle Creole, or some other coast
packet, frequently retained their quarters on the boat the short time it
was in port, and so monsieur and madame could accomplish their
necessary shopping, untrammeled by the elegancies and
inconvenient hours of a hotel.
 Things were conducted on a very liberal basis in those days. I
have a liking for that old way—it was so debonair and generous,
putting the captain on the same social standing as his guests.
On the lower side of Canal Street, about where Holmes’ store now
stands, were more homes, in a row, all the houses exactly alike, with
narrow balconies stretching clear across the fronts, in a most
confidentially neighborly way. The lower floors were doctors’ or
lawyers’ offices or exchange brokers’. Fancy goods, dry goods, retail
shops, in fact of every kind, were on Chartres or Royal Street; none
on Canal. R. W. Montgomery had his home also on that fashionable
thoroughfare.
Christ Church was on the corner of Baronne and Canal, and Dr.
Laycock was the pastor at the date of which I write, and, with few
exceptions, all these families were of his flock.
Lower Camp Street was occupied mostly by exchange brokers’
and such offices. The Sun Mutual Insurance Company had a
conspicuous sign on a modest two-story brick building which any
insurance structure to-day would put to shame.
 If it is near Christmas time, when we are taking this gossipy
ramble, we might meet a flock of turkeys marching up Camp Street,
guided by a man and boys with long poles. In those days fowls were
not offered for sale ready dressed or plucked, but sold “on the hoof,”
as we say of cattle. Camp and the adjacent resident streets were, to
use another Westernism, a favorite “turkey trot.” Those turkeys may
have trotted miles. Goodness knows whence they took up the line of
march—presumably at some boat landing—but they were docile as
lambs and in good condition. No roast turkey gobbler, or, better still,
boiled turkey hen with oyster dressing, tastes now like the ones
mother had on her table when I was a child and clamored for the
drum-stick. What does taste as good to us old folks to-day? Nothing!
Absolutely nothing!...
In Exchange Alley (it may have a new name now, since Triton
Walk and Customhouse Street and others of the old days have been
rechristened) my father and a number of other “attorneys at law,” as
their signs indicated, had offices. Mr. Wharton was one, and I also
recall two Hebrew beaux of that date who were neighbors of my
father’s, A. K. Josephs and M. M. Cohen. Nobody knew their given
names. Beyond Camp Street, near Magazine, Mme. Shall kept a
boarding house. It was a popular hostelry for gentlemen. Ladies did
not board, except (to use Susan Nippers’ language) as temporaries.
 Exchange Alley.

Visitors to the city “put up” at the St. Charles Hotel, in the hands of
Colonel Mudge. St. Charles was the best hotel even then, comparing
favorably with the Galt House, in Louisville, under the management
of that prince of hosts, Major Aris Throckmorton—which is saying
volumes for the St. Charles. In the season flocks of Nashville,
Louisville and Cincinnati belles descended upon New Orleans, sat in
gorgeous attire and much chatter of voices on the divans under the
chandelier of the St. Charles parlor, while the kindly fathers and
insinuating brothers, bent on giving the girls a good time, foraged
about the ample rotunda, captured, escorted in and introduced many
eligible beaux found sauntering around that fascinating rendezvous.
Up Carondelet Street—one could not find the location on a city
map now, for, as I remember, the streets were not named—were
suburban homes, all about, quite remote and countrified. Judge John
N. Duncan lived in one of those cottages. There was a grand, big
yard surrounding it, with fig trees, hedges, rosebushes and vines, a
perfect bower of delight to us children. Rose, the only daughter, was
a lifelong friend of mine. She became the first wife of Col. William
Preston Johnston. Nearby lived the Peter Conreys, who gave lovely
lawn parties, that the naughty uninvited dubbed “Feat sham peters.”
Not so very far away, in the neighborhood of Constance and Robin
Streets, there was erected in 1843 Quite a grand residence for the
Slark family. I do not remember much of them in those early days,
though they lived near enough to my father’s to be neighbors. Later
in life my acquaintance with them was more intimate. I recall, though,
quite vividly Mrs. Slark’s visiting card, which I admired prodigiously.
Being a small collector of curios that unique bit of pasteboard was
one of my treasures till I lost it! There seems to have been
considerable latitude in the style of visiting cards about that time—
some were highly glazed and had gilt edges; some were even pink
tinged, but I think Mrs. Slark’s was the ne plus ultra—a bird’s beak
holding a waving pennant, and on its flowing folds was engraved
“Mrs.—Abigail—L.—Slark,” something after the style of the eagle
and E pluribus unum.
I find I am wandering away from that dear old Canal Street of
fragrant memories. Fragrant, though the broad neutral ground was a
wilderness of weeds of dampy growth, and (so our John used to tell
me) snakes! There certainly were frogs after a spring rain. I have
heard their croaks. Further back toward the swamps were deep
ditches, with crawfish sneaking about in them. Fine fishing place for