A serious LAT relationship or a crazy machine? Metaphors in citizens’ perception of Belgian federalism

peer reviewed ; This paper proposes a quantitative and qualitative corpus-based analysis of the use of metaphors in political discourse from the original perspective of citizen discourse. Our data were collected from focus group discussions respectively held in the French-speaking and Dutch-speaking parts of Belgium, which tackled the citizens’ perceptions of Belgian federalism. Our findings suggest that citizens do produce metaphors when talking about complex political processes and that these metaphors reveal different political visions. This research also suggests differences in saliency of... Mehr ...