ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses path/movement/speed metaphors drawn from a special corpus of metaphors in Euro-debates, which is part of the ARC-project on 'Attitudes towards Europe'. The metaphors depicting political development in the EU as a form of travel along a road or path form the largest group within the corpus. Path, road or way metaphors abound in the public debate on EU politics, as these metaphors in question belong to one of the most basic schemas for the conceptualisation of processes spanning any stretch of time as well as for abstract social and psychological experience. Another field of vehicle-specific transport imagery is that of a ship or group of ships travelling from one port to another. The corpus contains 54 passages referring to the EU and its member states as sea-faring vessels, most of which, like the train metaphor, are used to highlight problems of hidden hierarchies among the EU member states or of policy co-ordination within the EU institutions.
