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 Musolff, Andreas
Mirror Images of Europe. Metaphors in the public debate about Europe in Britain and Germany
2000 • ISBN 978-3-89129-634-9
vii + 214 pp., paperback; EUR 19,50
If we go by the imagery used in the public debate, the European Union is a rather protean entity. Sometimes it is a ›train that must not be missed‹; on other occasions it is depicted as a ›house without exit doors‹, as a ›family‹, a ›marriage‹ or a ›ménage à trois‹, or again as a ›war zone‹ where ›battles are fought‹ over beef and a common currency. But despite their apparent inconsistency, the metaphors used to interpret modern Europe fall into patterns that are indicative of specific public attitudes and arguments in the different nations. Using a corpus of British and German media texts from the period 1989-2000, this book provides a contrastive overview over the main metaphor fields of Euro-debates in the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic. It highlights the characteristic differences of the EU's 'image' in both countries as well as the changes it has undergone since the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties.
This publication is the outcome of the author's research on "Attitudes towards 'Europe'" at the University of Durham.
Chapter I: The path is the goal or: the metaphorisation of European politics
Chapter II: Vehicles of Europe's political journey in the 1990s
Chapter III: Constructing the Union
Chapter IV: Metaphors of group membership and group control
Chapter V: The physiology of the EU and of its child, the euro
Chapter VI: War games for the EU: metaphors of competition and confrontation
Chapter VII: The drama of EU politics: comedy or tragedy?
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