Europe. Concepts. Online Lexicon. Bridging semantic gaps

At a time of widening political divides and the return of war to Europe, Europeans urgently need to clarify the changing uses and misuses of words. By enquiring into historical semantics on a Euro...

At a time of widening political divides and the return of war to Europe, Europeans urgently need to clarify the changing uses and misuses of words. By enquiring into historical semantics on a European scale and developing easily accessible material on key contested notions in several European languages ("populism", "war", "self-determination", etc), LexiECO aims to focus on key semantic issues underlying domestic and international debates and thus to help us better understand European diversity.

Under the leadership of a transdisciplinary team of social scientists from 5 HEIs, a Ukrainian institute and a Den Haag-based NGO, 120 authors prepare new educational resources, in particular an expandable online lexicon, based on the multilingual comparison of a first set of 20 key concepts, to « bridge semantic gaps » between Europeans. The knowledge co-creation includes 4 workshops; the dissemination phase includes a series of professional development trainings and a final multiplier event.

LexiECO will increase the skills and knowledge of Europeans to better understand the shifts and gaps of meanings of key notions on a European scale from Spain to Ukraine. It will provide a set of open-access resources where users may easily find clarifications about central yet ambivalent concepts, backed up by multilingual analyses. This is to our mind a vital precondition for overcoming incomprehension given the dramatic changes in European political vocabulary over the past decades.