This presentation examines two lexicalised compounds in Swedish with at least basically metaphorical senses connected with the Swedish Social Democratic vision and attempted practical construction of a modern egalitarian welfare state: folkhemmet: ‘’the people’s home’ and klassresa: ‘class journey’.
We are going to consider the experiential and conceptual grounding of the compounds folkhemmet and klassresa i) within a specific, Swedish cultural and ideological discourse complex as well as in relation to ii) a set of presumably universal meaning dimensions or functions, and iii) some embodied, also presumably universal image schemas.