Brexit and the Border - A critical discourse analysis of the European Research Group’s position on the Irish border issue

Sammanfattning: This thesis investigates how the discourse of the Eurosceptic European Research Group (ERG) relating to the Irish border issue in the Brexit negotiations is constructed. The purpose is to analyse an English nationalist and populist discourse which seemingly does not make sense. This is done using Norman Fairclough’s version of critical discourse analysis. The ERG is in the paper defined as English nationalists and populists based on previous research into Euroscepticism. English nationalism, which manifests as a defence of British sovereignty, and populism are used as theories for the social practice level of analysis within the CDA framework. The analysed material consists of the official ERG report on Northern Ireland, TV interviews with ERG members, and texts written by individual ERG members. The analysis of the ERG’s discourse suggests that for them a reclamation of sovereignty is more important than a supposed risk to the peace process on the island of Ireland. In fact, because of their populist belief that complex issues do not exist, they do not think there is a risk, and that the issue can be solved with simple ‘common sense’ solutions.