The EU’s Comprehensive Approach as the Dominant Discourse: A Corpus-Linguistics Analysis of the EU’s Counter-Piracy Narrative

Abstract

Using corpus linguistics techniques, this article discusses the EU’s comprehensive approach narrative in the context of counter-piracy at the Horn of Africa. It shows that (1) the comprehensive approach is systematically put forward by the EU in its counter-piracy discourse, (2) this approach is presented as the best (if not the unique) and normal way to deal with the problem, and (3) the EU claims the paternity of this approach and attributes successes to its own activities and approach. The article demonstrates that the EU uses the comprehensive approach narrative to showcase its positive and unique contribution as a global security actor and to normalize its power projection practice. This case study also contributes to demonstrate that the comprehensive approach tends to achieve discursive dominance at the EU level. By integrating interpretative framework from the field of International Relations (IR) with the empirical, data driven descriptions that corpus linguistics analysis provides this article makes an original contribution to European foreign policy studies and contributes to the methodological enrichment of the discipline.