o:28974 The end of a long and fraught marriage metaphorical images structuring the Brexit discourse en ABSTRACT: Set against the backdrop of a separation process between Britain and the EU, popularly referred to as Brexit, our paper explores how the MARRIED PARTNERS metaphor scenario structures the Brexit discourse via vivid metaphorical images of political reality describing complicated relations between Britain and the EU. We use a critical approach to metaphor (Charteris-Black, 2004, 2005) and especially apply Musolff‟s (2006) concept of “metaphor scenario” to the data collection gathered from various media sources published in English during the period closely preceding and following the Brexit vote. As “the MARRIED PARTNERS scenario is applicable to any bilateral […] relationship” (Musolff, 2006, p. 34), by exemplifying the Britain-EU relationship via numerous lexical instantiations (e.g. rocky marriage, messy divorce very hard on the children, shotgun divorce, etc.), we attest to a great generative potential of the MARRIED PARTNERS scenario as well as its argumentative use. Our main aim is to point out how the MARRIED PARTNERS metaphor scenario is used in political discourse both to simplify and enable the understanding of the tangled relationship between Britain and the EU at a crucial point in their history. Key words: Brexit; metaphor; MARRIAGE metaphor; DIVORCE metaphor; metaphor scenario; critical metaphor analysis 1552099 10.1075/msw.17010.dur 1552101 2210-4070 2023-05-03T09:03:36.492Z 44 no 46 Tatjana Đurović Univerzitet u Beogradu Ekonomski fakultet 12454503 0000-0002-8859-8638 Nadežda Silaški Univerzitet u Beogradu Ekonomski fakultet person 12608103 0000-0001-7655-1042 application/pdf 261912 https://phaidrabg.bg.ac.rs/o:28974 no yes 1 70 92000001 11A03 Metaphor and the Social World 8 1 25 39 2018