Rhetoric shifts within the traditional European Parliament majority: an assessment of EPP and S&D MEPs' plenary contributions

This dissertation assesses whether MEPs from the EPP and the S&D parliamentary groups have changed their rhetoric approach towards each other in the last four legislatures. The study is conducted manually and through the lenses of content analysis, taking a qualitative and quantitative approach on a sample of MEPs from the two groups who have covered the role of group coordinators in parliamentary committees. All the plenary contributions of the given legislatures of every MEP are carefully read and coded through different criteria. In this analysis, the evaluation of language and context especially allows to categorise every statement as a non-attack, an attack or an heavy attack. Hypothesising that MEPs from the two bigger pro-EU groups may have started to express vocal dissatisfaction towards the EPP-S&D majority more frequently than in the past, this analysis finds that, between the 7th and 10th legislatures the number of attacks out of the total number of statements has increased, mostly driven by German S&D MEPs.