ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some methodological issues confronting those who seek to research ideological metaphor. It then illustrates how the Competitive Race metaphor can be analysed using the published online records of the British parliament: Hansard. The chapter shows the ideological motivation that underlies much choice of language and demonstrates how the process of identifying metaphors, and the concepts that they assume, is a way of revealing their rhetorical role in the creation of power. It also illustrates how Critical Metaphor Analysis can be employed to identify an ideological metaphor. Since racing is related to embodied experience of fast movement, the chapter illustrates the frame of health and disease that is used to generate ideological metaphors for an anti-EU ideological position through the concept of 'Euro-sclerosis'. Competitive running (racing), fitness and health are conceptually related because the body becomes fitter and healthier by running; by contrast, the body that avoids exercise becomes less fit and therefore less healthy.
