Far from being rhetorical ornaments, metaphors play a central role in public discourse, as they shape the structure of political categorisation and argumentation. Drawing on a very large bilingual corpus, this book, now in paperback, analyses the distribution of ‘metaphor scenarios’ in more than a decade of public discourse on European integration, elucidating differences in UK and German attitudes and argumentation. The corpus analysis leads to a refinement of cognitive metaphor theory by systematically relating conceptual, semantic and argumentation levels and incorporating the historical dimension of metaphor evolution. Finally, drawing on examples of metaphor negotiation and on a reassessment of Hobbes’ concept of metaphor in Leviathan, the book highlights the ethical dimension of metaphor in politics.
CITATION STYLE
Musolff, A. (2004). Metaphor and political discourse: Analogical reasoning in debates about Europe. Metaphor and Political Discourse: Analogical Reasoning in Debates About Europe (pp. 1–211). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230504516
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