“Invader or Inhabitant?” – Competing Metaphors for the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The presence of linguistic metaphors characterizing the COVID-19 pandemic in the media is believed to be conditioned by conceptual metaphors. They tend to collate the features of the threat-imposing virus with an enemy through the cognitive comparison “COVID-19 is an Enemy”. The lexical field operating in the production of this metaphor is linked to the all-out war with an invisible foe. Nonetheless, other competing conceptual metaphors tend to emerge viewing the alarming virus as a biological entity that we have to live and compete with at the same time. The latter may indicate the process of reframing COVID-19 pandemic through substituting the source domain of War by, for example, Peace, Sport and Fire source domains. A versatility of source domains has its pragmatic value. Since the conceptual metaphors tend to influence public opinion formation (framing effect), adoption of certain cognitive metaphors is crucial. Therefore, the present paper investigates the dynamic of the conceptual metaphors in the worldwide discourse represented in the coronavirus corpus of web-published news created by Brigham Young University as well as proposing viable suggestions regarding more beneficial conceptual metaphors for the public welfare.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments and considerations on an earlier version of this article. However, it is the author who is solely accountable for all the mistakes or controversial ideas represented in the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. eg, war, battle, fight, struggle, combat, attack, defeat, win, live with, coexist, play, compete, spark, ignite, blaze, etc.

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Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.