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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 15:2 (2016) ► pp.147–172

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Rethinking Bosnia and Herzegovina’s post-coloniality

Challenges of Europeanization discourse

Published online: 9 June 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.15.2.02maj
This paper investigates politico-media discourses of the international community revolving for the last few decades around the process of Europeanization in Bosnia and Herzegovina from its Dayton inception until 2015. We first explain the contours of the BiH context and then use a critical discourse analysis to assess the data collected between 1997 and 2015 drawn from a variety of textual resources such as mainstream newspapers, online media, and international community websites to explain the main trends of the Europeanization discourse in the country. Grounding our analysis within the postcolonial theory and post-communist studies, we critically examine the post-1996 peace and state building as well as Europeanization processes in BiH with respect to signs of postcolonial condition including perpetual transition and a state of exception.
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