The Trojan Horse in Our Backyard

High metaphoricity is one of the characteristics both the Bulgarian and the British media discourse share. Metaphors are not only a very powerful tool employed by the media to convey even the slightest nuances of a topic but also an extremely powerful mechanism used to guide thinking and to direct it to a particular set of mental schemes, stereotypes or familiar pictures. That is why this chapter titled “The Trojan Horse in our Backyard” focuses on the metaphors used in the presentation of Muslims and the various nuances they bring to the image of Muslims. The analysis has shown that media discourse in both countries employs metaphors from the domains of war, disease, disaster and, interestingly, transport. The findings prove the presence of similar thinking patterns which have in some instances been influenced by the free transfer of information over the Internet.