Knocking at the House with Closed Doors: Metaphorical representation of European integration in Ukrainian media discourse before 2014

The idea of European integration played an important role in Ukrainian political discourse, but was attributed different meaning in the course of its political development. This idea was crucial for a definition of Ukrainian foreign policy preferences and for the construction of Ukrainian national identity. In the Ukrainian context, this idea was found to be primarily constructed in regard to the question of the historical and geopolitical place of Ukraine. Public opinion in general largely reflects the instability in Ukraine-EU relations, as well as the inconsistent European integration policy of the Ukrainian government and the lack of a coherent policy from the side of the European Union. This article focuses on a study of how the European integration was conceptualized and metaphorically presented in the Ukrainian press in the period of 2005 – 2010. By examining the metaphors used to describe this process in the Ukrainian media between 2005 and 2010, we gain valuable insights into the historical and discursive nuances that have shaped contemporary perceptions of European integration in Ukraine. Based on the Critical Metaphor Analysis and Conceptual Metaphors approach, we investigate the main frames and metaphorical representations of Europe and the European integration in the Ukrainian media. It can be noticed that the European integration was described in Ukraine before 2014 with a tension between the two discourses – the discourses of closeness and of openness. The European Neighborhood Policy was created for an opening of the door for Ukraine to Europe and as a ‘road map’ for the Ukrainian way towards the EU. Despite that, for the majority of Ukrainians the EU before 2014 was still an unrealistic ‘dream’ where doors were ‘rather closed’ then opened.