NCRE Post-Graduate Seminars

“Europe in the French Pacific Regions: A Discourse Analysis of the Local

Press' Construction of the European Union”

Yoon Ah Choi (PhD Research Project)

2

Map of the French OCTs

New Caledonia - Wallis/Futuna - French Polynesia

3

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

How is the EU’s role in the Pacific represented in the local newspapers of French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna?

Is France ready to let go? Is there a visible construction of power relations in the discourse?

How does the EU’s initiatives and actions of the development plan coincide with local objectives?

What is the local conception of the EU as a donor, ‘development’, ‘democracy’, ‘regionalism’, ‘globalisation’…?

4

Key Issues

Development Programme (ACP aid- 9th EDF)

Good governance (Cotonou Agreement)

Political situation- Independence, regionalism and EU integration

Economic stability and resources

5

Theoretical Framework

Post-Structuralism/Postmodernism

MeaningReality

KnowledgeIdentityIdeologyPower

Foucault, Derrida

Barthes, Bourdieu

Habermas, Adorno

6

Methodological Framework

Syntactic/semantic analysis

Grammatical structure, transformations, functions,

transitivity, agency

Content Analysis

Information structure

Lexical Analysis

Metaphors, Category labels

7

Sources

Corpus- Major local newspapers French Polynesia: Tahitipresse,

Les Nouvelles de Tahiti

La Depeche de Tahiti

New Caledonia: Le Kanak

Les Nouvelles Caledoniennes

Libre Expression

Official documentsCotonou Agreement9th EDF Plan

Interviews & Surveys

8

Delimitations & Variables

Local press media

Newspaper articles dating after the Cotonou Agreement

23rd June 2000

Domestic focus

Independent variable:Development strategies, amount of aid

Dependent variable:Discursive structure of EU in the press

Moderator variable:Political situation

Controlling variable:Corpus of press articles

Intervening variable:Regional participation, Euro currency

9

Novelty & Importance

GOOD TIMING

NON-EUROCENTRIC VIEW

INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

10

Hypothesis/Assumptions

Positive-negative evaluations of major issues

Favourable position of the OCTs in regards to regionalism and EU integration

Discursively constructed identities and relations, power hierarchy

WILL UNCOVER…

11

Merci beaucoup!

Yoonah Choi

email:

ych23@student.canterbury.ac.nz