The COVID-19 and war: an analysis of conceptual metaphors of the pandemic in the Chinese press
Abstract
The military metaphors frequently used to talk about public health and sanitation issues generate controversies among professionals and academics. The debates around the COVID-19 pandemic constitute a new episode of this phenomenon. This paper aims to analyze the conceptual metaphors, whose source domain is war or the military, used by the Chinese press to represent the pandemic caused by COVID-19. Based on a corpus of 679 news texts and opinion articles corresponding to a period of 18 months, some key factors of conceptualization have been identified: war, soldier, enemy, pioneer, accomplice and weapon. The samples extracted show that the use of metaphorical expressions related to the source domain of war is associated with the specific political, cultural and socioeconomic environments of China. Since those expressions have been widely accepted in Chinese newspapers about the current pandemic, a better understanding of this topic will shed light on how China influences public opinion and shapes the public agenda both domestically and globally.
Downloads
Article download
Crossmark
License
In order to support the global exchange of knowledge, the journal Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación is allowing unrestricted access to its content as from its publication in this electronic edition, and as such it is an open-access journal. The originals published in this journal are the property of the Complutense University of Madrid and any reproduction thereof in full or in part must cite the source. All content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 use and distribution licence (CC BY 4.0). This circumstance must be expressly stated in these terms where necessary. You can view the summary and the complete legal text of the licence.
