The Evolution of the Journey Metaphor in Albanian Political Discourses on European Integration
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33700/1580-7118.26.1.73-84(2024)Keywords:
conceptual metaphor, framing, persuasion, political discourse, AlbaniaAbstract
Political discourse heavily relies on metaphor usage to frame how the public views or understands political issues by eliminating alternative points of view. One of the most common usages of metaphors is to positively represent future scenarios that are constructed as solutions to existing problems thus conceptualizing an ideal Utopia or the good projected in some remote space in time. Through the activation of unconscious emotional associations metaphors contribute to the ‘creation’ of a desired story and politicians have to tell the right story in order to persuade the public opinion and serve their ideological purposes. Since the fall of communism, Albanian politicians have mainly relied on the journey metaphor to conceptualize Albania’s EU accession process. This particular metaphor frame is very frequent in public debates as well as in everyday language use. It is part of a system of journey / transport metaphors that pervades our conceptualization of processes extending over a period of time.
Through a corpus of speeches collected during the last five years this paper aims at analyzing how Albanian politicians use the journey metaphors to shape their political and ideological objectives. Even though different usages of the metaphor are noticed, it mostly implies an imperative for the country to learn, mature and transform during the EU integration process.
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References
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