Conference Contribution Details
Mandatory Fields
Conacher, J.E.
25 Jahre Mauerfall – Reflections on GDR literature, its legacy and connections between the GDR and Ireland (UL)
“Our Berlin Wall” in the Irish Times: From global event to domestic metonym
University of Limerick
National Refereed Conference Paper
2014
()
Optional Fields
07-NOV-14
08-NOV-14
                      

“Our Berlin Wall” in the Irish Times: From global event to domestic metonym.

Events such as the building and fall of the Berlin Wall can be viewed simultaneously as local, national and global phenomena which are carried by and reinterpreted, indeed reconstructed within the communal imagination.  Consequently, they are remembered not only for their own local or national impact, but also, on the international stage, for how they resonate – for readers outside the original national borders – with events, people and places closer to home. This chapter explores changing representations of the Berlin Wall within the Irish Times, during a ten-year period from Gorbatschev’s coming to power in 1985, through the Wende period and German reunification to the fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1994.

Drawing on a broad data-set, the study demonstrates how, beyond simple depictions of the Wall as a part of ‘normal’ life in Berlin and the ultimate fall of the Wall as a global event, the Wall is also exploited by Irish Times journalists and those they quote as a rhetorical device to shape and challenge individual and collective opinion of domestic events within the island of Ireland. While the Wall constitutes a symbol of immutable division and irresolvable conflict, its fall emerges as a metonym for the sudden and unexpected collapse of a broader, apparently solid, entity; the chapter concludes with an analysis of the use, over this ten-year period, of this metonym in a range of domains within the Irish context including North-South relations, constitutional amendments, urban planning and presidential elections.  

DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service)/School of Modern Languages & Applied Linguistics, University of Limerick