Introduction

The study of emotions is an emerging field in International Relations (IR) with open questions and gaps in need of further exploration. In particular, scholars are just beginning to theorise how the discursive and socially embedded nature of emotions intersects with political power. In addition to physiological approaches that examine the effects of bodily feelings on decisions and behaviour of policymakers, there has been a growing number of constructivist studies that make the social contextualisation of emotions and language in international politics the focus of their analyses (see, e.g., Crawford 2000; Ross 2006, 2014; Bleiker and Hutchison 2008; Fattah and Fierke 2009; Bially Mattern 2005; Fierke 2013; Hall 2012). For example, Ty Solomon (2014) provides a broader analysis of the affective dimension of language and discourse linked to power. Linking emotion to power ties in with and extends another research strand that deals with the phenomenon of status differentiation in IR (Linklater 2004, 2011; Wolf 2011; Albert et al. 2013; Paul et al. 2014). Here, Reinhard Wolf convincingly suggests including emotions in research on status relations in IR. Yet, presently, the two research strands do not speak to each other: those who appreciate the role of emotion in language do not specifically address status, and those who address the emotionality of status do not specifically examine its manifestation in language.1

This article links these two flanks in a novel way. Based on a constructivist approach, it investigates the socio-emotional underpinnings of status and identity in the social construction of power structures in international politics through language. Emotions are understood here as moral judgments that represent an intellectual appraisal of past experience and future expectations. This article focuses on the discourse-analytical variant of constructivism (Diez 2001). There also exist, within the constructivist research programme, alternative approaches to the study of emotions such as the study of non-verbal and visual expressions (e.g., the Mohammed cartoons) (Bleiker 2009; Fierke 2013). The article seeks to show how the study of the discursive exercise of power at the international level can benefit from the inclusion of a socio-emotional perspective. It is argued that political discourses and their social effects (the exercise of power and status differentiation) are amplified and, in some cases, even made possible using specific emotional categories. In short, emotions contribute significantly to the discursive construction of social identities and power relations in international relations.

While the emotional underpinnings of identity and status in world politics have certainly not been denied by constructivism from an ontological standpoint, they have received surprisingly little attention in terms of theoretical conceptualisation. Many constructivist accounts emphasise a logical connection between power and language. Yet, most seem to either take for granted or neglect to give equal attention to their emotional underpinnings. To be absolutely clear, constructivists who study the discursive makeup of IR certainly do not turn a blind eye to the emotions. Bially Mattern (2005: 32), for example, states explicitly that social identity includes emotional bonds. Even though Bially Mattern and other discourse scholars (e.g., Müller 1994; Zangl and Zürn 1996; Weldes and Saco 1996; Diez 2001; Zehfuss 2002; Hansen 2006; Epstein 2008; Herschinger 2012) present convincing accounts of the discursive nature of the power-identity dynamics in world politics, they centre on the discursive construction of power structures based on socio-linguistic identity and, arguably, take for granted the emotional underpinnings of such power–discourse dynamics. It is argued here that social identity is not only represented by language but also by the emotions communicated through language.

There is a logical connection to emotions in Bially Mattern’s argument. If language power is able to inflict social ‘suffering’ (the loss of social status) upon agents such discursive identity constructions implicate an affective dimension. For, if a ‘victim’ can be forced to maintain a particular identity through non-physical power, it must feel the negative social implications of such power in order to be persuaded or forced into compliance. Otherwise these discursive mechanisms would be useless:

Moral consciousness-raising by the international human rights community often involves a process of ‘shaming’. Norm violating states are denounced as pariah states which do not belong to the community of civilized nations […]. Shaming then constructs categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’, that is, in-groups and out-groups, thus reaffirming particular state identities. Some repressive governments […] feel deeply offended because they want to belong to the ‘civilized community’ of states. In other words, shaming then implies a process of persuasion since it convinces leaders that their behavior is inconsistent with an identity to which they aspire. (Risse and Ropp 2013: 15)

Obviously, therefore, emotions play an important role in language-based processes of international power and status differentiation. It therefore makes sense, from a theoretical and conceptual point of view, to illuminate the emotion-based underpinnings of these processes in more detail. As the abovementioned authors illustrate, the ‘emotional side’ of constructivist discourse analysis in IR is indeed often tacitly implied; however, it has so far been conceptualised theoretically only in its infancy and thus remains largely untapped for the social constructivist research agenda.

This article wishes to make stronger use of this existing potential. It is assumed that language includes a socio-emotional dimension, which reproduces, through collective emotional experiences and representations in the form of specific emotion categories, certain power structures and social hierarchies at the international level or, alternatively, may also put these into question. This argument is in itself not necessarily new (see, e.g., Ross 2006). However, the theoretical conceptualisation of the socio-emotional foundations of discourse analysis in IR still remains largely underdeveloped. To this end, the present study makes an original contribution by aspiring to bring out emotion-based processes and categories of the discursive construction of structures of power, status hierarchies and group identities at the international level.

This is relevant for two reasons. First, the article promotes an understanding of the logical combination of power, status, language, identity and emotion, which furthers knowledge of the broader question of how emotions impact on socially constructed structures and processes at the international level. Constructivism in IR already offers an extensive research programme that integrates a variety of concepts such as norms, language and culture. What this article adds to this research programme is another, yet, underexposed conceptual facet and it thus makes an attempt to draw more nuanced contours for emotion research within social constructivist discourse analysis in IR. Second, the study of the role and impact of emotions on the discursive construction of power, status and group identities at the international level adds a fresh perspective to the important, yet, underconceptualised question of how emotions relate to power (Bleiker and Hutchison 2008; Solomon 2014). Understanding the performative power of emotions could help emotion research to step further out of the closet of academic specialisation by showing how emotions are central to some important questions in IR. How is social order maintained? What is the social basis of power and status hierarchies? What causes social change?

The article is divided into four sections. The first section is devoted to developing the general connection between language and emotion. Based on this, the second section shows how emotions communicate knowledge and value judgments through language and thus amplify the discursive construction of identity-based status hierarchies at the international level. In the third section, this argument is further specified using particular analytical emotion categories in order to make the assumptions useable for social constructivist discourse analysis. To this end, the study distinguishes between emotion categories that confirm status hierarchies, on the one hand, and emotion categories that transform status hierarchies, on the other hand. The theoretical and conceptual assumptions are then empirically illustrated using an exemplary discursive representation of emotion-based power figurations between the EU member states and the EU candidates. Finally, the article summarises some broader theoretical implications of the argument and provides a possible research agenda for emotion-based social constructivist discourse analysis.

Emotion and language

Constructivist studies in IR usually understand emotions as evaluative statements or assessments that provide information about how certain actors perceive their international environment (Crawford 2000; Lebow 2005; Ross 2006). This assessment is based not only on a purely individual assessment of external stimulus effects. It is rather the result of an intersubjective situational understanding (Harré 1990; Solomon 1993; Parkinson et al. 2005; Rose et al. 2006). The study of emotions is thus inextricably linked to socio-cultural structures:

To examine emotions as socio-cultural phenomena is to detach them from their association, in the West, with a Cartesian distinction between mind and material world. We instead approach emotions as socially meaningful expressions, which depend on shared customs, uses and institutions. (Fattah and Fierke 2009: 70)

According to this understanding, the meanings communicated by emotions are not only individually or universally but socially constructed. Whenever a political actor feels angry or ashamed, the particular emotion often depends on the social context from which she originates or in which he moves (Edkins 2003; Bleiker and Hutchison 2008; Linklater 2011; Hopf 2010; Bially Mattern 2005; Fierke 2013).

To sum up, it is argued, from a constructivist point of view, that emotions involve value judgments that allow international political actors to participate in world politics using specific meaning structures. For example, shared emotions, even for events that have destroyed the social glue, may rejoin a political community as they are shared representations of this traumatic event with which many people can identify (Hutchison 2010). From this perspective, emotions serve as categorising systems of simplification, which enable people to make sense of the complexity of world politics. A social constructivist perspective emphasises the importance of the intersubjective and epistemic character of emotions without denying their phenomenological expression in the sense of physically perceived feelings. To clarify this point, this article distinguishes between emotions or emotional feelings (in the sense of representational moral value judgments), on the one hand, and feelings or non-emotional feelings (in terms of a phenomenological excitation state), on the other hand. Emotions differ from feelings based on the notion that the former is not only an elusive physical sensation but a cognitive representation of a concrete object (e.g., the snarling dog as dangerous) (Goldie 2000: 51). This article focuses on collective emotions that are analysed through elite discourses. The contribution is thus less interested in the internal feelings of individuals but rather in the shared emotional patterns between collective actors. In other words, it is less concerned with the study of subjectivity, but rather with the intersubjectivity of emotions.

Language plays an important role in that. As Matthew Leep’s (2010) argument in his analysis of the construction of Self and Other in the US discourse on Israel implies, emotions represent a discursive category that constitutes the subjects and their relation to others:

The article starts with the recognition that emotions pervade the language of world politics and concludes that emotion is a central part of how states construct identities and legitimate politics and how they are moved to act. (Leep 2010: 334)

Leep’s study is instructive insofar as it refers to the emotional underpinnings of language-based processes in IR. A similar argument is put forward by Sara Ahmed (2004: 13): ‘Feelings become real as an effect of language, and these feelings, through language, shape different kinds of actions and orientations’. But how exactly are language and emotion related?

The question of how language and emotion relate to each other can be initially answered by using a simple correlation. It is well known that we use language to express our inner feelings (for example, to say‚ ‘I love you’). Language serves as a communicative tool to convey perceived emotional states intersubjectively (Wierzbicka and Harkins 2001: 3). In linguistics, emotions have already been integrated into textual and discourse analysis. These approaches increasingly challenge a previously dominant approach in theoretical linguistics, which is based on the representation of the ideal speaker/listener and attributes his/her language skills to purely cognitive processes that run largely independent of affective processes (Chomsky 1986). However, neuroscientific research shows that a clean separation of cognitive and affective processes in the human brain is no longer feasible (Damasio 2010; Mercer 2005). Rather, it can be assumed that rationality and emotion affect each other and are mutually dependent. For example, the emotional feelings of fear and shame serve our physical survival and social integrity, respectively (Jeffery 2014: 12; see also De Sousa 1987).

While these approaches have already shown that language and emotion are hard to separate, other approaches go one step further and argue that emotions, in fact, constitute social discourses. Below, I shall outline two of these approaches briefly to be able to work out the importance of emotions in the discursive exercise of power at the international level. These are, firstly, the discourse-analytical approach by Michel Foucault and, secondly, the cultural theoretical approach by Ernesto Laclau. Foucault describes discourses as a means of exercising power (technologies of power) that defines the social parameters of speech acts (Foucault 1980: 194). This results in a political order that specifies the status and identity of the actors involved and which is maintained and reproduced through discourse. The social perception of discourse in Foucauldian studies includes an emotional (even if only rudimentarily conceptualised) component that enables the discursive exercise of power to exert its power-conserving effect. Foucault refers here to the sense of honour or shame as disciplinary instruments (strategic formations) in discourses on nationalism or patriotism (Foucault 1980: 204). Laclau follows a similar approach, but makes a sharper analytical distinction between affective and discursive processes. He distinguishes the discursive structure as ‘form’ from the emotional bond (affective investment) of the subject to these structures as ‘force’ (Laclau 2004: 326). In his view, the latter is largely responsible for the fact that power can be exercised through language. Without the emotional anchor of discourses, Laclau argues, status differentiation and identity formation simply cannot be explained. According to Laclau, emotions constitute discursive structures:

Without this intensity or force (that is without (affective) investment) there would be no discursive structure in the first place […]. The complexes which we call ‘discursive or hegemonic formations’ […] would be unintelligable without the affective component. (Laclau 2005: 111)

Emotions thus arguably represent an important link between the discursively constructed identities of certain subjects, on the one hand, and the power and status differentiation exerted through discourses, on the other hand.

Based on this interrelated understanding of language and emotion, the argument in this article can be developed further, to show that emotions contribute to the discursive construction of social identities, power and status differentiation in international relations. The next section lays out in more detail how emotions communicate knowledge about the world and develop the capacity to exercise power at the international level in terms of discursive status differentiation and group identities.

Emotionalisation as a persuasive discourse strategy

The social and discursive constitution of emotions, as shown above, takes place through communicative interaction. Nicholas Onuf (2003: 29) writes that, ‘in the absence of language, no action can be fully social’. I extend Onuf’s logic by claiming that, in the absence of emotions, ultimately no language can be fully meaningful. Certain words have a negative connotation which, in addition to their descriptive meaning (denotation), assigns them an emotional value and an affective meaning (for example ‘woman’ versus ‘bitch’ or ‘African-American’ versus ‘Negro’), which in turn represents a certain attitude of the speaker (Leech 1974: 26). Conversely, words may be stripped of their negative emotional connotation, for example, by the use of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ instead of ‘genocide’ or ‘collateral damage’ in order to trivialise the killing of innocent civilians. The use of negative connotations narrows the scope for interpretation and creates an emotional impact on the listener. In addition, the negative meaning may be intensified by affective adjectives. For example, it was a common stereotype among white North Americans to speak of ‘the savage and dirty Indians’ when it came to the interests of Native Americans (Templeton and Katrina 1994).

Through repeated articulation of such words, they tend to ‘stick’ with the identity of the person involved (Ahmed 2004). Similarly, in IR, discourses are commonly understood as meaning structures that construct social reality by perceiving certain identities as dominant or marginal (Milliken 1999: 229). Emotions are known to express our inner feelings towards outsiders through language as an intersubjective way of codifying and transmitting our inner feelings as well as to arouse feelings in others. As Laclau points out, emotions include the ability to form a discursive power structure (form) through emotional stimulation (force). The emotional underpinnings of discourse can thus help explain why certain discourses produce a social resonance while others do not (Hielscher 2003). Language functions as a form of power exercise because certain words can be charged with emotional value, thereby amplifying if not enabling performative speech acts.

Because their negative connotation and affective meaning are often inextricably linked to their descriptive meaning, stereotypes and verbal discrimination create certain identities and status hierarchies — or challenge them (e.g., ‘pig’ versus ‘policeman’) (Butler 1997: 8). With the help of targeted persuasive emotionalisation strategies such as verbal abuse or insults (naming and shaming), groups can communicate emotional categories through language, not only to promote the identification within their own group but also to exert power over others (White 1990). In a Foucauldian sense, emotions can thus be understood as ‘strategic formations’ that are tied to certain social categories (for example, gender, ethnicity, nation) and can shape discourses in a meaningful way. Fattah and Fierke (2009: 86) express a similar point of view when they state:

In the discourse of the Arab Middle East, the loss and attempt to regain dignity are interwoven with the expression of feelings of having been, historically and in the present, humiliated and betrayed.

From a Foucauldian perspective, emotions form the foundation of the ‘technologies of power’ with the help of which certain discourses can manifest themselves as dominant or marginal. Emotions provide an analytical and conceptual tool to study how social groups in IR maintain status differentiation and identity formation through the discursive exercise of power in order to rule over other groups. This point will be dealt with in the next section.

International status differentiation and emotional knowledge

Why do we eat with forks? It is not based on a functional purpose because we could easily eat with our hands. Neither does eating with forks enhance our physical survival or give us significant material advantage. We simply use forks to avoid getting our fingers dirty because dirty fingers are considered distasteful. This unpleasant feeling of distaste is an emotional reaction based on what Western society considers ‘uncivilised’ or ‘barbaric’.

As this example (adopted from sociologist Norbert Elias) shows, distaste is an emotion-based judgment about proper behaviour that is tied to a certain status and group identity. Certain forms of social behaviour are prohibited not because they are inefficient or threaten the survival of the group but because they are emotionally regarded as offensive and disrespectful and thus threaten the status and identity of a particular group. This finding is, of course, not new. The social constructivist research programme in IR (in its various strands) has impressively demonstrated that certain forms of social behaviour in international politics are not only rejected because they are functionally inefficient or threaten the physical survival of the group, but because they are socially constructed and non-compliance threatens the identity of a particular group (see, e.g., Onuf 1989: 120). What the abovementioned example, taken from process sociology (which was established by Elias), is meant to illustrate is the fact that the social construction of collective identity is heavily influenced by emotional categories such as disgust or shame.

According to Elias, established members of a group transmit such emotion standards to non-established members. In this way, strong emotional feelings are generated and shared, which are in turn tied to specific moral values as well as a particular form of social behaviour (Goldie 2000: 28). Transferred to international politics, this means that whenever non-established group members (for example, stateless groups) appear to ‘forget’ norm-based behaviour, established group members (for example, states) will attempt to enforce social conformity through the ritualised invoking of negative emotional feelings. One can think here of the tense relationship between Israelis and the Palestinians (a 2012 pro-Israel ad in the US depicts Palestinians as ‘savages’ and Israelis as ‘civilised’). Through this affective dialogue (based on learning and the internalisation of certain emotional behaviour), emotions contribute to the social construction of group identity and status differentiation at the international level, which reproduces and stabilises the power hierarchy between established and non-established group members (Elias 1939/2000: 303). So it is quite plausible to assume, using process sociology, that it is possible, with the help of emotions, to acquire knowledge about the world and simultaneously exercise power in specific social contexts and groups. This study will use the term ‘emotion-based’ or, more simply, ‘emotional knowledge’ to refer to this phenomenon (Frevert 2011).

Process sociology by Elias also shows that emotional knowledge as part of the asymmetries of power and social identity in international politics strengthens cohesion of a group vis-à-vis outsiders (Elias et al. 1965/1994; Elias 1939, 1985). Socially established groups, such as the ‘Great Powers’, develop for their members a positive self-image, which reflects their group charisma vis-à-vis socially non-established or marginalised groups, such as the ‘global periphery’ or the ‘developing countries’ (Elias 1985). By group charisma, Elias describes a collective sense of social superiority based on Max Weber’s insight that the members of this group have superior properties (Weber 1921/1978).

The emotional feeling of superiority is often fixed to certain group-specific physical attributes such as wealth, skills, military force, cultural achievements, demographics, or technological innovation, which underpin the higher status of the established group. The members of that group thus tend to view their identity as morally ‘better’, whereas outsiders or marginalised groups are classified as inferior because they seem to be missing similar group-specific attributes and standards (Tajfel 1978; Hogg and Abrams 1988). This status-related sense of belonging and identity within a social group is closely related to emotional feelings of pride and self-esteem among the established members (the ‘proud Self’), on the one hand, and emotional feelings of contempt and feelings of inferiority toward outsiders (the ‘disgusting Other’), on the other hand (Leep 2010: 335). For example, the social construction of an ‘Arian identity’ in Nazi Germany was deeply rooted in the collective establishment and cognitive experience of ritualised and institutionalised emotional feelings of pride and confidence in the German Herrenvolk (evident, for example, during the infamous Nuremberg rallies) accompanied by the projection of collective feelings of contempt and disgust toward the Jewish Other (Kertzer 188: 122).

Belonging to an established group evokes emotional feelings of delight and satisfaction by participating in joint group activities, on the inside, and emotional feelings of contempt and disapproval toward non-members, on the outside. To achieve this, members of the established group discursively ‘invest’ in emotional feelings of pride, on the one hand, and discursively ‘impress’ emotional feelings of shame onto an out-group, on the other hand (Ahmed 2004: 6, 12). As laid out above, intergroup stereotypes and verbal categories are emotionally codified to evoke an undesired identity whenever they are discursively invoked. If members of the out-group internalise these emotion categories and thus identify with the negative attributes forced onto them by the established group, the latter can dominate. For example, the power figuration of colonial rule over non-European societies by imperial European societies was based on a discursively constructed ‘standard of civilization’ and collective fantasies of ‘white supremacy’ (Elias 1939/2000; Linklater 2011). Desirable attributes, such as moral superiority, piety and ‘cleanness’, were discursively linked to particular emotion categories (pride) and associated exclusively with the superior Europeans. In contrast, non-Europeans were imagined and verbally discriminated against as ‘dirty’, criminal and sexually aggressive characters (Lorcin 1999). As the protagonist Simon Templar states in the British novel The Holy Terror:

(T)he savage ruthlessness of purpose behind the mere physical presence of that magnificent brute-man, sensed the primeval lust of cruelty in the parting of the thick lips and the glitter of the eyes. Almost he seemed to smell the sickly stench of rotting jungles seeping from its fetid breath into the clean cold air of that English dawn […]. (Chateris 1940: 121–22)

The former discursive labels and attributes (‘ruthless, cruel, rotting jungle’) are coded negatively and projected onto the out-group. This projection produces emotional feelings of contempt and disgust vis-à-vis non-Europeans, whereas the latter (‘clean cold air of that English dawn’) evokes emotional feelings of pride and confidence among Europeans. In other words, the discursive power of European imperialists appears to be undergirded by emotionally codified stereotypes. The accompanying identity, status rank and power position were thus not only constructed by discourses of Self and Other, but also protected and preserved through the erection of emotional barriers and emotional rigidity, such as stigmatisation and shaming, to limit social exchange with non-Europeans (Ghandi 2006; Zarakol 2011). Such discursive stigmatisation not only emphasises the incapability of a particular out-group to conform to a social ideal (the ‘civilisational standards’ of the established group), thereby confirming the former’s inferior social status. More importantly, it also codifies an emotional feeling of disgust, which signals lower status (Miller 1997: 9). Accordingly, contact by insiders with outsiders is associated with negative emotional feelings. By internalising misrecognition, the marginalised group can then only take on the identity ascribed to it by the more powerful established group (Hoggett 2009). What these marginalised groups experience is an emotional feeling of social suffering and ontological insecurity: a lack of collective agency to resist.

This example shows how closely the discursively reproduced power structures and collective identities of European colonisation were linked to polarising emotional feelings of disgust and pride: the ‘non-European’ Other transforms into the object of feelings of ‘Europeans’. In other words, emotions reproduce and reinforce specific meaning structures of Self and Other through language while, at the same time, blocking alternative constructions of meaning.

Emotions can increase power and status differentiation in international relations through the discursive use of group-specific verbal expressions, symbols and analogies (Kaufman 2001). Emotions not only draw clear boundaries between insiders and outsiders, but the established groups may also employ emotional discourse strategies to impress on the non-established group an identity that practically negates their self-determination and responsibility, thus rendering it a passive subject (Dalal 2002). By internalising status difference, the non-established group is often left with an exogenously defined identity that is imposed on it by the established group based on discursive stigmatisation (‘dirty’) and related emotional categories (disgust), which downgrades the self-determined subject to an externally defined object and consequently forms and strengthens a structure of domination and power asymmetry (Linklater 2011: 201; Taylor 1995: 225).

This is not to say that marginalised groups are incapable of developing collective identities and group charisma. However, given a history of discrimination and victimhood, the particular emotions associated with and collectively experienced by these groups tend to be defined more in terms of humiliation and shame and less in terms of pride and confidence (Spelman 1998; Saurette 2006). Because of that, marginalised groups often lack the psychological means to raise their status independently. Instead, they continue to be prone to the negative emotion-based identity projections of the established group (Lovaglia and Michael 1997; Bird and Clarke 2000).

The acknowledgement of humiliation and shame among marginalised groups can nevertheless turn into resentment and vengefulness, potentially leading to a change in social status from collective subordination to empowerment. Such a change in status, however, entails a change in self-identity, for example, from collectively identifying as members of a ‘colony’ to viewing each other as members of a sovereign nation-state. For this identity transformation to occur, marginalised groups must develop a new emotive vocabulary, for example, from the participation in transnational social movements or the support from powerful outsiders. These actors may, for example, stress the injustice of the status quo and, via collective acknowledgement, enable marginalised groups to transform passive emotions like shame and humiliation into anger and resentment in order to sustain active resistance against the established group (Barbalet 2001; Summers-Effler 2002; Fierke 2013). Natalya Vince (2010: 449), for example, shows how Algerian post-colonial identity in transnational anti-colonial movements was constructed against France in religious and national terms linked to particular emotion categories of pride and confidence: ‘Islam is our religion, Arabic our language, Algeria our fatherland’. Hence, in addition to reinforcing social hierarchies in international politics, emotions may equally contribute to the assertion and realisation of basic rights, the development of new solidarities and identities and the rise in a formerly marginalised group’s social status.

To sum up, processes of emotionalisation undergirding status and identity form an inseparable element of discursively constructed power structures in international politics. Groups in world politics exercise power through the discursive enactment of particular emotions. Emotions work to position groups in world politics within structures of dominance and resistance. The power of discourses can thus only be properly conceived in its entirety with the help of particular emotions that underpin its social effectiveness. In the next sections, I will outline two sets of particular emotion categories to sharpen this argument further: one set of emotions that confirms and thus reinforces the status gap between established and marginalised groups; and another set of emotions that disconfirms status rank, thus challenging the status quo. The selection of the emotion categories pride/shame and fear/resentment is based on Elias’ established/outsider model described above. As Elias et al. (1965/1994: xviii, xxii) point out:

The gratifying euphoria that goes with the consciousness of belonging to a group of higher value and with the complementary contempt for other groups […] shows very clearly the complementarity of the superior human worth — the group charisma (pride) — attributed to the established by themselves and the ‘bad’ characteristics — the group disgrace (shame) — attributed by them to the outsiders.

Conversely, they combine the reduction of inequality in power with the established group’s ‘fear of losing their identity as well as their privileged position’, on the one hand, and with resentment on the part of marginalised groups through ‘counter-stigmatization’, on the other hand (ibid.: xlix, xxi). This constellation represents the emotion-based core of Elias’ figuration model between established groups and outsiders, which is linked here with constructivist discourse analysis.

Status-confirming emotions: pride and shame

Established groups maintain their higher social status by reproducing a charismatic self-image of social superiority vis-à-vis marginalised groups, described earlier as group charisma. This group charisma is based on the emotion of pride. Pride is an expression of a group’s valued past as well as its confidence in the future (Collins 1981; Scheff 1990). Pride thus confirms the superior status and identity of established groups, which enables these groups to exercise power over marginalised groups by attributing a lower social status to them (Hymans 2006: 2). Through particular emotion categories, it was suggested that marginalised groups internalise a collective identity of social inferiority linked to emotional rigidity and stigmatisation (Elias et al. 1965/1994: 8, 12). This collective identity of social inferiority among members of the marginalised group is based on the emotion of shame. Shame signals the presence of a moral trespass and self-blame. It indicates dissatisfaction with one’s own impression in the eyes of others based on a negative response (Scheff 1990; Harré 1990). Shame thus confirms the inferior social status and identity of marginalised groups. In sum, shame serves as an emotion category that confirms lower social status, whereas pride confirms higher social status.

However, it is important to note that the pride/shame dualism is not neatly confined to the established/outsider distinction. Pride/shame dynamics also serve to maintain social conformity within an established group. Inside an established group, members are not treated as approximate equals but are also woven together in emotion-based status/power figurations. The superior self-image of the established group is formed based on the minority of its morally ‘best’ members (core group). This core group performs a norm-building function and exercises social power over non-conformers through emotional rigidity and stigmatisation (Elias et al. 1965/1994: 13, 42). Members can only participate in the established group by complying with certain institutionalised emotional patterns of affect control (Eznack 2011). Members who do not comply (for example, by siding with or showing sympathy for members of the marginalised group) risk losing their status as members of the established group. In the French colonial empire, for example, the ‘standard of civilisation’ was traditionally set by white upper class elites, while French white anti-imperialists (the non-conformers) were associated with emotionally coded negative categories like ‘betrayal’ and ‘treason’ and thus placed outside the established group (Ghandi 2006: 2).

Status-disconfirming emotions: fear and resentment

Emotion categories like pride and shame are rooted in a group’s ontological security (Mitzen 2006; Steele 2008). Ontological security is closely aligned with an actor’s social status and self-identity. Any threat to an actor’s ontological security conflicts with that actor’s sense of belonging to a particular international community and risks losing its subjectivity in the flow of world politics. It is thus plausible to suggest that this should arouse a very strong emotional reaction. As the sociologist Charles Cooley (1922: 290) writes: ‘A man cast out of his […] secure place in the system of the world feels like that of the child in the dark; just as impulsive, perhaps just as purposeless and paralyzing’. Fear of losing social status may thus be understood as another important emotion category in the power/status figuration between established and marginalised groups. If an established group feels that it may lose its superior social status, this may, in turn, elicit a loss of confidence among its members about the future (Barbalet 2001: 161; Hymans 2006: 2). Fear based on a threat to a group’s ontological security tends to promote isolation, suspicion, and a general undermining of trust in the world (De Rivera 1992: 201). More specifically, it can lead to a denial of the rights of others, in order to exclude them from gaining access to social resources, as well as a disproportionate display of pride or even arrogance to compensate for the loss of confidence in oneself (Elias 1985). Fear thus tends to disconfirm the superior status of an established group.

Resentment, by contrast, can uplift members of the marginalised group. Resentment describes the emotional appraisal of an imbalanced or asymmetric power relationship and the ensuing realisation of an unjustified lower social status (Barbalet 2001: 126). While shame invites subordination and the denial of rights by the established group, resentment, on the contrary, empowers a marginalised group to reassert their basic rights and to correct the status gap in order to restore self-confidence and elevate social standing. For example, emotional feelings of resentment among European societies under colonial rule towards the European imperial powers moved anti-colonial resistance and the construction of post-colonial identities. Resentment can be said to disconfirm the inferior status of marginalised groups.

Empirical illustrations

The following example is meant to illustrate the theoretical assumptions laid out above. It is not meant to be a fully fleshed-out case study that is able to validate the hypotheses laid out above. Given limited space available, I have to leave this task to others. Instead, the example is chosen to offer an empirical window into the emotional undergirding of social hierarchy between the EU member states and pre-accession countries. Its purpose is to give the reader a more detailed account of how the conceptual nexus between power, status, identity and emotions outlined above operates at the international level.

On 5 February, 2003, the US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a presentation to the UN Security Council in which he exhibited evidence to support his allegation that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. On the very next day and in response to this presentation, the foreign ministers of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia signed and published an Open Letter endorsing the US position.2 In this so-called Vilnius letter, the signatories expressed confidence in the evidence presented by Powell and underlined their willingness to contribute to a military intervention to invade Iraq. The countries of the so-called Vilnius group,3 eager to join NATO and the EU, justified their position by referring to their own history of tyranny and oppression and the shared democratic identity of the transatlantic community ‘of which we are a part’. The Vilnius letter received strong criticism from many EU member states with the fiercest opposition coming from France. During a memorable press conference following an EU Council meeting on 17 February, 2003, French President Jacques Chirac made the following remarks:4

I shall […] make one comment […]. As regards the candidate countries — I’m not talking about countries which aren’t candidates — honestly, I think they have behaved somewhat irresponsibly. Because being a member of the European Union nevertheless requires a minimum of consideration for the others, a minimum of consultation. If on the first difficult issue you start giving your point of view irrespective of any consultation with the entity you want to join, then that isn’t very responsible behaviour. At any event, it’s not very good manners. So I believe they have missed a good opportunity to remain silent. Let me add that, quite apart from the not-being-nice or childish aspect of that initiative, it’s dangerous. […] So these countries have both shown a certain lack of manners and been somewhat reckless of the risks of falling too quickly into line with the US position […]. After all, when you’re in the family you have more rights than when you’re asking to join, when you’re knocking at the door. […] So, obviously, an initiative like the one you’re referring to can but strengthen, among the general public in the Fifteen — and particularly in those countries, which will be ratifying through referenda — a feeling of hostility. […] If they wanted to reduce their chances of joining Europe, they couldn’t find a better way.

Chirac’s comments can be drawn on to illustrate how the discursive construction of group-specific identities is amplified by emotion categories. This will be carved out analytically in the following paragraphs using the emotion categories pride/shame and fear/resentment described above. This example is particularly well suited because the analytical focus on emotion provided here can be contrasted with a conventional constructivist discourse analysis of Chirac’s comments provided elsewhere (Wiener 2004: 209). Wiener’s (ibid.: 196) discourse analysis of the debate between ‘old’ and ‘new’ member states over the Iraq war accepts the notion that norm compliance rests on ‘persuasion through arguing […] and shaming’, and extends this argument into the arena of norm contestation. Her argument builds on the assumption that discourse establishes a normative structure and that discursive interventions are central to the interpretation and validation of established norms (ibid.: 217). While Wiener’s framework presents a powerful research tool to evaluate norm compliance and contestation through discourse analysis, it does not incorporate emotions as an additional category of analysis despite the emotional underpinnings of her argument. To reemphasise a point made earlier, the discursive intervention of ‘shaming’ implies an affective dimension. For, if an actor can be shamed into compliance, it must feel the negative social implications. Otherwise these discursive interventions would be unable to exert their power. As Wiener (ibid.: 206) points out, the reactions by the candidate countries suggest that ‘some feel that they get less than they have bargained for’. Her conventional constructivist discourse analysis thus takes affective dynamics for granted without making them explicit.

The analytical focus on emotion employed in the case study here seeks to correct this imbalance and extends Wiener’s analysis by proposing a framework for empirical research on emotion discourse in international politics. If emotions underpin the content and effects of discourses, they need to be identified and made accountable based on empirical research. The study of emotion discourse in IR involves a project that seeks to integrate emotions systematically within discourse analysis. The goal is to identify a way to examine affective connotations and emotion categories that come to the fore in these discourses.

It has already been pointed out that established groups use emotion categories in order to maintain a positive self-image of social superiority vis-à-vis marginalised groups. This self-image is often reproduced through discourses that include an internalised emotional feeling of pride while simultaneously projecting an externalised emotional feeling of shame on the so-called outsiders. In his remarks, Jacques Chirac, for example, emphasises discursively the psychological boundary between the EU member states, i.e. those who are ‘already in the family’ (Self), on the one hand, and the ‘candidates’, i.e. those who are not part of the established group (Others), on the other hand. However, the French president not only uses discursive identity categories to separate the ‘established’ EU member states from the ‘outsiders’ (EU candidates); at the same time, he also draws on emotion categories, which are intended to reinforce the distinction between members and non-members.

In finding about that membership in the EU requires ‘a minimum level of consideration for others’ who ‘have more rights’, Chirac expresses a strong emotional feeling of pride that is supposed to signal the social superiority and group charisma of France as a member of the EU. This emotional feeling of pride as a member of an established group clearly distinguishes them from the supposedly ‘irresponsible’, ‘childish’ and ‘reckless’ behaviour of the candidate countries that do not possess ‘good manners’ (that is, civilised behaviour). Chirac denies the members of the Vilnius group the ability to comply with the standards of the established group of the EU members. This form of discursive power and status differentiation by the French President is connected with the attempt to evoke an emotional feeling of shame and inferiority among the candidate countries. It is supposed to make clear that taking sides with an EU non-member (US), coupled with the delineation from a member of the EU core group (France), is not in line with the ‘civilised’ standards of the established group. This challenge (from Chirac’s perspective) to the status hierarchy between France and the candidate countries is expected to be restored by status-confirming emotion categories on the part of the Central and Eastern European countries. In other words, from the perspective of the French president, the candidate countries had behaved as irrational children who should be ashamed of their iniquities.

But what precisely are the categories and structures in the text that represent and express such emotions? This aspect will be illustrated below using a simplified cognitive linguistic discourse analysis of Chirac’s comments, which emphasises the emotional potential and the activation as well as construction of relevant emotional representations:

I shall […] make one comment […]. As regards the candidate countries — I’m not talking about countries, which aren’t candidates —

  • honestly [creating uneasiness: ‘what’s about to happen next?’],

  • I believe [expression of a conscious perception of an emotional feeling state]

they have behaved somewhat

  • irresponsibly [indirect emotion encoding for lack of empathy and carelessness].

Because being a member of the European Union nevertheless requires a minimum of

  • consideration for the others [implicit emotional expression of wounded pride by pointing to a lack of recognition of the EU member states’ status by the candidate countries],

a minimum of consultation. If on the first difficult issue you start giving your point of view irrespective of any consultation with the entity you want to join, then

  • that isn’t very responsible behavior [emotional expression of a feeling of responsibility; projection of shame through paternalistic parent–child metaphor: this could be a strict father summoning his children].

At any event,

  • it’s not very good manners [emotional reference to lower social status/‘poor upbringing’, designed to express disgust and aversion; repeated projection of shame through paternalistic parent–child metaphor].

So I believe

  • they have missed a good opportunity to remain silent [sarcastic remark as an indirect emotional expression of anger/annoyance].

Let me add that, quite apart from the

  • not-being-nice or childish [parent–child metaphor associated with direct emotional expression of anger/annoyance; projection of shame by means of negative emotional coding]

aspect of that initiative, it’s

  • dangerous [intensification of the previous negative emotional coding using fear and the threat of serious consequences: ‘this is not some stupid prank!’]. […]

So these countries have both shown a certain

  • lack of manners [repeated reference to lower social status by means of an emotional expression of disgust and aversion; projection of shame through paternalistic parent–child metaphor]

and been somewhat

  • reckless [repeated emotional expression of a feeling of disrespect for the higher status of the EU members; projection of shame by complaining about a lack of maturity: ‘how can one act so carelessly!’]

of the risks of falling too quickly into line with the US position […]. After all,

  • when you’re in the family [emotional expression of a sense of belonging/we-feeling/emotional intimacy; pride of belonging to an established group]

you have more rights than

  • when you’re asking to join, when you’re knocking at the door [intensification of the previous family metaphor by contrasting with a negative emotion encoding as supplicants = shame]. […]

So, obviously, an initiative like the one you’re referring to can but strengthen, among the general public in the Fifteen — and particularly in those countries which will be ratifying through referenda — a

  • feeling of hostility [specific categorisation of a negative emotion through an emotion term]. […]

If they wanted to reduce their chances of joining Europe, they couldn’t find a better way [indirect emotional expression of anger/annoyance through sarcasm].

Included in Chirac’s comments are the discursive manifestations of emotions (emotion potential) as well as discursive strategies of emotionalisation (activation and construction of certain emotional representations) using emotional expressions and emotion terms. The gap between speaker and addressee is increased: while the EU members use emotional expressions and nominal lexemes (e.g., family, respect, responsibility) to emphasise their superiority and moral authority, the EU candidate countries’ representation, by contrast, is based on emotional expressions and terms (e.g., supplicants) and adjectival attributes (e.g, irresponsible, reckless, childish), which portrays them as weak, inferior and helpless. The interaction of cognitive and emotional construction of power structures, status differentiation and identity formation through language becomes clear: ‘Specific conceptualizations and feelings are conveyed as value judgments through linguistically encoded cognitive representations. These emotional feelings, when they are internalized, can lead to the construction and stabilization of certain emotional dispositions’ (Schwarz-Friesel 2013: 235).

The candidate countries, on the other hand, did not conform to their ascribed inferior status as ‘uncivilised’ applicants by expressing shame. Claiming an unwarranted lowering of their social status in Europe by the French president’s emotional outburst, they demanded instead (in no less emotional ways) to be treated as soon-to-be members of the established group. As the later Polish President Lech Kaczynski expressed in the aftermath, ‘With me this way of thinking according to the motto “We take you into the European Union, so you must obey” does not work’.5 Chirac’s humiliating remarks apparently increased resistance and solidarity among the candidate countries. The latter stood opposed to what they viewed as an unjustified lower social status and demanded instead to be treated as equals on the basis of their already acquired higher status as soon-to-be EU members. This can be illustrated by the use of status-transforming emotion categories in the ensuing discourses and counter-narratives. As Alexandr Vondra, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic, unambiguously exclaimed, ‘We are not joining the EU so we can sit and shut up!’6 This reflects the perception of the candidate countries as ‘de facto members’ because Vondra speaks here already of joining the EU in the past tense. Poland’s Prime Minister Leszek Miller joined the chorus of disobedience by underlining that ‘(w)e are too big and too proud a country, with a rich history, tradition and a conviction about our importance in Europe, to keep quiet. […] We will speak when we consider it appropriate and we will say what we consider appropriate’.7 The remarks include implicit emotional expressions such as anger and defiance that can be taken, in each case, as an expression of resentment, as well as the emotion term ‘pride’. The Slovakian newspaper Pravda echoed the Polish and Czech official responses about Jacques Chirac’s ‘degrading message’ saying that ‘(n)either Slovakia, nor any other candidate country will enter the EU to keep silent but in order to make their voice be heard more’.8 Peter Medgyessy, the Hungarian prime minister, even gave the French president the proverbial ‘cold shoulder’ (an expression of emotional rigidity) casting with aspersion that he was ‘too well brought up’ to respond to these accusations.9 Here, Chirac’s projected emotional feeling of disgust and aversion due to a lower social status is simply mirrored back.

In Latvia, the newspaper Neatkariga Rita Avize sarcastically explained why the lower social status of candidate countries in Europe seemed unjustified: ‘All right, Monsieur Chirac. Perhaps we are poor. Perhaps we are not raised properly. We do not know about fine wine and the various directions of avant-garde art. But we do not repay those (US) who have helped us and continue to help us with ingratitude!’10 Sarcasm, in this case, can be taken as an emotional expression of resentment. By voicing the emotion term ‘ingratitude’, the feeling of aversion towards France is again amplified and contrasted with a positive emotional encoding (‘reward’). The Latvian newspaper Diena expressed this emotional feeling more conspicuously:

Perhaps there are some in Paris who want to be the patriarch of Europe’s ‘family’, letting others in the family ‘knock on the door’ humbly [emotional expression of a sense of inferiority]. By denying the right of others to hold independent views, however, France runs the risk of being alone with its own view.11

These empirical examples help to illustrate how particular emotion categories function to shape identity construction, status attribution and power structures in international relations. In this case, France expressed a sense of pride, thereby reinforcing its superior social status in Europe vis-à-vis non-EU members. By expressing a status-confirming emotion (pride), France expected the Central and Eastern European countries to socially conform by expressing a status-confirming emotion (shame) on their part, thereby confirming their inferior social status as non-EU members. Instead, the candidate countries expressed a status-disconfirming emotion (resentment) because these countries apparently viewed their inferior social rank as unjustified:

  • All Central European nations [we-feeling]

are

  • used to [conscious perception of an emotional feeling state]

the interpretation that some countries have more rights than others. They are also used to

  • furious tirades [specific categorization of an emotion through a dual emotion term],

followed by tanks. If Chirac wants to revive

  • the spirit of Leonid Brezhnev [negative emotional coding by means of a historical comparison]

and renew the doctrine of limited sovereignty, which means fewer rights for some countries, it is his own affair.12

In the eyes of most Central and Eastern European countries, Chirac’s statements must have been perceived as an unjustified lowering of social status associated with an emotional history of collective suffering and victimhood under foreign rule — from Napoleon and Nazi Germany to the Soviet communism. Eager to break with this emotional pattern of blaming themselves for their inferior social status (thereby confirming this status through the expression of shame), the sharing of a status-disconfirming emotion (resentment) within the Visegrad group as well as the alignment with the US as a powerful outsider appears to have actively promoted a collective awareness of an unjustified lower social status among Central and Eastern European countries. Resentment, in this case, arguably undergirded the discursive construction of post-Soviet collective identities, thereby challenging the lower status and enabling the candidate countries to exercise social power as well as to sustain active resistance against the stigmatising attempts of France.

Conclusion

This article presented building blocks for emotion-based discourse analysis in IR. Emotion-based social constructivist discourse analysis offers the possibility to broaden the conceptual spectrum of the language-based social construction of power structures, status differentiation and identity formation at the international level by including emotions as an additional category in the analysis of intersubjectivity. It has been argued here that emotions provide knowledge and thereby contribute to the maintenance and transformation of collective identities, status hierarchies and the exercise of power at the international level through language. In short, emotions amplify political discourses of dominance and resistance. It was further argued that these discourses are often associated with specific emotion categories such as pride/shame (status confirmation) or fear/resentment (status transformation).

The main finding that could help to better understand the language-based design of power structures in IR, ultimately results from the argument presented here, which claims that the emotional underpinnings of language as semantic structures of meanings strengthen discourses and their social effects (the exercise of power and status differentiation). This points to a central aspect regarding the impact and role of emotions in IR, i.e. what emotions actually ‘do’. Emotions do not replace discursive power and identity categories as categories of analysis but complement them by adding an additional, albeit crucial, perspective. Emotion-based discourse analysis examines emotion categories not in isolation but instead tries to link them to the existing social constructivist concepts such as culture, norms and language. This article has generated insights regarding the socio-emotional nature of discourse analysis in IR and thus complements and expands the existing language-based constructivist explanations of the role of power and status. In the remaining paragraphs, the article will summarise the specific value that this analysis offers for our understanding of identity, power and status relations in IR by outlining other research areas of IR in which emotion-based discourse analysis could contribute to a better understanding of social dynamics at the international level.

First, emotion-based discourse analysis ties in with constructivist Peace and Conflict Studies. Emotions already play an important role in the study of conflict dynamics in civil wars and transitional justice. However, emotions in these contexts are often seen more as a hindrance to the process of reconciliation and trust building between former warring parties, as they may recall the memory of previous violent crimes and humiliation. Frequently, therefore, former conflict parties are concerned to transform emotions such as hatred or revenge into seemingly unemotional ‘rational’ juridification processes. Yet, the potential positive dynamics and diversity of emotional experiences, such as trust building and forgiveness through the shared experience of emotions in reconciliation processes in South Africa after the end of apartheid, is too often undervalued (Ross 2014: 148). A purely rationalist approach may be counterproductive because this perspective fails to appreciate the fact that ‘emotions are central and inseparable from processes of reasoning and rational thought’ (Jeffery 2014: 15). To this end, emotion-based discourse analysis generates important insights with respect to understanding identity, power and status because it reveals how emotions are capable of making morally informed judgements about Self and Others.

Secondly, emotion-based discourse analysis can contribute to investigating the link between emotions and norms in IR. Linking norms and emotions — as in the case of ‘naming and shaming’ pointed out above — is important to explain why actors behave in socially acceptable ways — or not. Norm-abiding actors must feel the negative social implications of such power in order to be persuaded or forced into compliance. This is a distinctive effect that emotions have on politics that traditional discourse analysis does not tell us a lot about. Moreover, emotions can serve as indicators for analysing whether or not certain norms are still deemed relevant. As Mercer (1996: 23) argues: ‘One way to test for the presence of norms is to look for emotion’. This link could be promoted further, for example, by demonstrating how emotions may enhance the relevance and impact of the existing international norms. Eznack (2011), Koschut (2014) and Hutchison (2010), for instance, show that emotions play a major role in the peaceful resolution of norm conflicts on the international stage. Another aspect involves the question of whether and how international actors themselves can develop emotion norms and how the expression of appropriate emotions impacts on their relationship.

Finally, emotion-based discourse analysis can contribute more broadly to empirical investigations of macropolitical changes of power structures and status differentiation in the international system, for an instance the rise of emerging powers such as China, India and Brazil within ‘Western’-dominated global power structures. This pattern can be linked directly to the argument advanced here as these so-called ‘rising powers’ enter international society as ‘outsiders’, facing social constraints and stigmatisation and feeling humiliated because they seem to be either unable or unwilling to live up to the ‘civilisational standards’ of the established group (Zarakol 2011). The same is likely to be of relevance regarding social resistance and transnational protests by social movements such as the World Social Forum or the recent uprisings in the Arab world.

Notes

  1. 1

    I owe this point to an anonymous reviewer.

  2. 2

    ‘Statement of the Vilnius Group Countries’, available at http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=19022 (last accessed on 13 February, 2015).

  3. 3

    The Vilnius group was a group of NATO-aspirant countries created in 2000 to strengthen practical cooperation and to facilitate information exchange prior to NATO accession. Some of these countries were also aspirants for the EU enlargement.

  4. 4

    Jacques Chirac (2003) ‘Press Conference given by the President of the Republic of France’, Brussels (17 February), available at http://www.ambafrance-uk.org/Extraordinary-European-Council (last accessed on 13 February, 2015).

  5. 5

    ‘Kaczynski brüskiert Chirac’ [‘Kaczynski snubs Chirac’], Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (24 February, 2006): 3.

  6. 6

    ‘The United Voices of Eastern Europe’, eNews issue (25 February, 2003), available at http://www.khouse.org/enews_article/2003/514/print (last accessed on 13 February, 2015).

  7. 7

    ‘The United Voices of Eastern Europe’, eNews issue (25 February, 2003), available at http://www.khouse.org/enews_article/2003/514/print (last accessed on 13 February, 2015).

  8. 8

    ‘Chirac sparks “New Europe” ire’, BBC News, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2780881.stm (last accessed on 13 February, 2015).

  9. 9

    ‘Jacques Chirac’s Samson option’, Economist (20 February, 2003): 15.

  10. 10

    ‘Chirac sparks “New Europe” ire’, BBC News, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2780881.stm (last accessed on 13 February, 2015).

  11. 11

    ‘Chirac sparks “New Europe” ire’, BBC News, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2780881.stm (last accessed on 13 February, 2015).

  12. 12

    ‘Chirac sparks “New Europe” ire’, BBC News, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2780881.stm (last accessed on 13 February, 2015).