SHIFTING FROM NEUTRALITY TO EMPATHY: A CDA OF EU’S OFFICIAL RHETORIC ABOUT GAZA

Abstract

This study explores how the European Union (EU) frames humanitarian empathy and neutrality in official discourse during the 2023-2024 Gaza crisis; and whether the EU's discourse shows transition from neutrality to empathy or not. Using Fairclough's three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis, the study analyses 30 statements by EU 0fficals, including press release statements, resolutions and speeches. The findings of the study revealed five relevant themes: Shift from Diplomatic Restraint to Affective Vocabulary, Strategic Pairing of Sympathy with Security Alignment, Moral Vocabulary Without Political Consequence, Emotional Urgency as a Rhetorical Substitute for Policy Shift, The Displacement of Agency Through Passive and Nominalized Constructions. This analysis unearths that while the EU successfully incorporated affective language to signal empathy, the EU consistently suppressed acts of agency and condemned the acts of violence through systemic ambiguity. The combination of empathy and uncertainty indicates an EU approach to symbolic action for reputational legitimacy in relation to moral disaster, but did not generate substantive diplomatic accountability. The study concludes by suggesting that while the EU humanitarian discourse is consecutively and performatively normative, it suggests a lack of substantive accountability for violence in the future. The initial research has implications for how critical discourse theory can inform our understanding of how institutional language internally manages developmental ethical claims in relation to moral disaster in protracted conflicts.