CFE Working paper series No. 49 Satirical Depictions of the European Union A Semiotic Analysis of Political Cartoons on the 2004 Enlargement and 20092012 Eurozone Debt Crisis Tra Thanh Pham CFE Working papers are available at the website of the Centre for European Studies www.cfe.lu.se Tra Thanh Pham holds a MA in European Studies from Lund University and this paper is her graduate thesis. Currently, she is a researcher at the Institute for Studies of Society, Economy and Environment, Hanoi, Vietnam. Her research interests include cultural studies, identity studies, and ethnic minority studies from anthropological approach with a focus on livelihoods, identity, and their relations to agricultural and ethnicity policies. Centre for European Studies at Lund University: Box201: Phone +46(0)46-2228819 SE-22100 LUND Fax: +46(0)46-2223211 Sweden E-mail:
[email protected] CFE Working paper series is published by Centre for European Studies at Lund University ©2013 Tra Thanh Pham, and CFE Editor: Henrik Petersson 2 CFE Working paper series No. 49 Abstract This study examines the visual representations of the European Union (EU) in political cartoons on the 2004 enlargement and the 2009-2012 Eurozone debt crisis, and the interactions between these depictions and Europe’s socio-political order. Carried out on fourteen political cartoons (out of a 300-cartoon corpus), the visual analysis is based on the theories of traditional semiotics, social semiotics, and metaphor. The analysis results show that the cartoonists’ depictions of the EU bear a strong resemblance to the popular discourse. The EU is often depicted as a disunited political entity, whose orientation and action are decided by pragmatism and national egoism of its individual member states.