From speaking of texts to speaking of Europe

Abstract

In this contribution to the festschrift for Kjersti Fløttum, I highlight our shared research interest in texts and text linguistics, particularly our first meeting in the 1980s and our focus in the 2010s on Europe. By that point, we had both expanded text linguistics to encompass studies of how people use discourse – Kjersti’s path – and laughter – my path – in the European Parliament.
 With reference to Fløttum’s excellent PhD thesis “Le résumé scolaire” (1990) and her subsequent project on “Speaking of Europe” (2013), I discuss, against the backdrop of my own work on the use of humour in the European Parliament, how the expansion of text linguistics may risk exploding into an unwieldly multiplicity of approaches. The conclusion reflects my wish for a unitary model of how language, text and discourse on the one hand, and society on the other, are firmly interlinked.