Title: Semantic Sovereignty
Subtitle: Interpretation, Contestation, and the Remaking of Meaning
Subject Classification:  Politics and Government, Society and Culture, Language and Linguistics  
BIC Classification: CF, JF, JP
BISAC Classification:
Binding: Hardback, eBook
Planned publication date: Apr 2027
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83711-820-5
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83711-821-2

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Description

This book examines semantic sovereignty in contemporary Europe in terms of who can define, stabilise, and legitimise meaning when shared interpretive frameworks weaken and public concepts become increasingly contested. Focusing on such terms as democracy, freedom, truth, extremism, diversity, war, security or science, it argues that struggles over meaning have become central to political and ethical life.
The book situates these struggles within a broader condition of semantic neo-modernity, in which meaning is neither securely anchored in inherited narratives nor dissolved into indeterminacy, but continually reorganised through unstable and competing semantic orders. Europe is approached not as a single interpretive space, but as a plural and internally differentiated field where semantic authority is unevenly distributed across regions, institutions, communities, and media environments.
Simultaneously, it shows that meaning is not only contested but also governed. Across digital platforms, institutional vocabularies, policy frameworks, and public communication, new forms of semantic authority shape and determine which interpretations become visible, credible, and durable. Bringing together critical discourse analysis, comparative semantic inquiry, conceptual history, digital ethnography, platform analysis, as well as semiotics and multimodality, the book develops an interdisciplinary framework for analysing the remaking of meaning in contemporary Europe.

Biography

Author(s):  Dr Anna Danielewicz-Betz is an interdisciplinary educator and researcher specialising in digital communication. She has held academic posts across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Her current research examines political meaning, semantic pluralism, and digital platform governance.

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