Images of the Lisbon Treaty debate in the British Press. A corpus-based approach to metaphor analysis.

Many scholars have shown how metaphors are fundamental in interpreting and understanding the complex dynamics of the political debate about Europe. By presenting European issues in the form of well-known and recognisable schemas and scenarios metaphors make them accessible to the general reader. Metaphors have turned out to be particularly significant in the identification of ideologies and values of a discourse community. Nowadays, research is involving the application of metaphor analysis to real situations. have shown how some intuitions may reveal to be partially true or completely wrong when confronted with the real occurrences of metaphorical expressions in a corpus and suggest a new approach to metaphor as ―social and situated, as a matter of language and discourse, and not just as a matter of thought‖. Against this background, this research project aims to investigate the representation and description of the European Union integration process related to the Lisbon Treaty debate in a selection of British tabloids and broadsheets. In particular, this presentation aims to explore the most recurrent conceptual metaphors in order to show how not only do they describe the scenario created by the Irish rejection of the treaty but also give information about Britain‘s perception of the EU and its future. The decision to investigate the British press is due to the fact that other studies have already been conducted in this field but also to the assumption that printed media are one of the most attractive genres and may indicate the general overview and public perception of a specific topic. The relationship between Britain and Europe has been a controversial issue and has occupied the pages of national newspapers and filled up the political agenda. This much debated issue has in fact seen both political and social supporters and opponents to the integration of Britain in the EU discussing over the best option to choose. The present research project is divided into 6 Chapters. The first one provides a general overview of the political background to the Lisbon Treaty ratification. Chapter 2 traces the main tenets of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory focusing in particular on the methodology of Cognitive Linguists to investigate metaphors. Chapter 3 provides information on the selection of data, their collection steps and corpus size. It gives an overview of articles distribution in the entire corpus making parallels with the historical background. Chapter 4 is concerned with the two stage analysis undertaken following Charteris-Black‘s Critical Metaphor Analysis procedure. It focuses on the first stage of analysis carried out on a sample of articles providing a basis for a more quantitative analysis. It shows how from a first reading it has been possible to individuate the most recurrent conceptual domains and draw some preliminary observations. In particular, Chapter 4 deals with the first stage analysis of the two most recurrent conceptual metaphors in the corpus: MOVEMENT and CONFLICT metaphor. Chapter 5 deals with the analysis of MOVEMENT metaphors in detail. It examines the six scenarios emerged from the analysis of both the political scenario and the media coverage of the two conceptual metaphors identified: LISBON TREATY RATIFICATION IS MOVEMENT FORWARD/DIRECTION and REJECTION OF RATIFICATION IS LACK OF MOVEMENT/OPPOSITE DIRECTION. Chapter 6 examines the CONFLICT metaphor in detail. It focuses on the three scenarios emerged, the Irish, the British and the European ones trying to identify commonalities and distinct features among them. The Conclusion indicates that the findings are consistent with some tenets of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory but also confirms its critics‘ insights into metaphor analysis application to real world issues. Moreover, it also tries to integrate the two metaphor analyses provided in Chapters 5 and 6 and identify the role of metaphor in the European debate on the Lisbon Treaty.