In the view of cognitive linguistics, abstract concepts are often understood through more concrete domains of experience, and the resulting conceptual metaphors deeply influence the way people think of and reason about them. Over the past few decades, several interesting studies have been published about this feature in the realm of politics, where the power of speech is greatly felt. One of the most basic concepts of this realm is that of the state, sometimes equated with the country people live in. This paper discusses similarities and differences in the conceptualization of the state in Chinese political discourse on one hand, and Hungarian political discourse on the other, as they are reflected in the source domains used as vehicles of understanding. The discussion is based on corpus research findings, but the analysis relies both on individual intuition of the authors, members of these two cultures (yielding quality analysis), and on frequency counts in the texts of the corpora (quantity analysis). The functions of culture in shaping metaphors and choosing a specific source domain are also taken into consideration in this contrastive study of the two languages.

The article examines recent developments in the fields of Community immigration policy and the free movement of workers from the new Member States during the transition period. It is argued that policy choices have been dominated by narrow economic considerations rather than by a comprehensive vision of the issue. Reading between the lines of legal norms and policy initiatives, what emerges is a division based not so much on citizenship, but rather on whether one has already been admitted to the European labour market or not. The article also reviews some recent cases of the ECJ, arguing that access to social benefits for those who exercise the right to free movement of workers between the Member States is not a subjective right, although the restrictions are more limited than they were before the introduction of the concept of European citizenship. This should have the effect of allaying fears of ‘benefit tourism’ from the new Member States.

The present article aims to point to some contradictory aspects of the forthcoming Eastern Enlargement of the EU. These contradictions can be perceived both between the EU and the Candidate Countries, and Hungary. It will be highlighted that the formal transposition of the ‘social and labour law acquis’, does not automatically mean substantial alignment. There is an urgent need to attribute a prominent role to solidarity and social inclusion as fundamental values, since not everybody is capable of adapting to the drastic economic and social changes, Eastern Europeans had to go through during the last decade when economic transformation took precedence over social issues.

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