On the europeaness search. Mental Maps of Europe in the social memory concern of europeans

Abstract

This paper raised up as a search for europeanness which is supposed to underlie among the members of European Union (EU). Going along the way some preliminary questions sprang out which were demanding foreground attention. Such is the global vision for the EU required in each country. We understand the way to get this aim should be given by the citizens daily life behavior. Therefore there is no place for speculating about deciphering the europeanness attributes; on the reverse a full consideration is given to verbal behaviors bringing the broadest approach to european configuration. Our starting point is the actual status of EU membership in different countries. Given the fact that each country enjoys its own language, we are assuming that a geographical knowledge concerning the neighbors is contained within those languages. So the individuals speaking a language show a lexical wealth comprehending a popular geographical knowledge, as an active participant members of the so called social memory of a language. On the other hand there is a psychological reality of individual memories. According to repeated investigations these individual memories are not accessible to conscious decisions. Consequently we have been compelled to look for new ways detecting the latent structure of lexical memories. The main contribution of the paper consist of summarizing an european vision such as it is derived from the usual command of lexical geography by EU members. We are displaying local data obtained from spanish students; our purpose was not to show any definitive statement about the subject matter but only to bring an exercise of the method.