Moving Forward or Turning Back? Slovak Parties and the Future of the EU

Abstract

This article explores which metaphors relevant political parties in Slovakia use when they speak about the EU's “finalité politique” by focusing on an analysis of their electoral manifestos prepared for the European Parliament elections in the period 2004–19. Based on the conceptual metaphor theory and a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods of metaphor analysis combining insights from European studies and cognitive linguistics, the analysis subsequently aims to estimate the positions of selected parties on the EU's finality. I show that while there are differences between the parties in their preferred “finalités politiques,” there is a certain mainstream party agreement on the issue.