ABSTRACT
This article provides a comparative analysis of how frontline workers were constructed by the UK media prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. Both the News on the Web Corpus and the Coronavirus Corpus, as monitor corpora of web-based new articles, were utilised to identify changes in both the frequency and use of the word front*line from 2010 to 2021. Findings show that, following the outbreak of COVID-19, constructions of frontline work were more frequently associated with medical professions and became more figurative in nature. Our findings provide a counterpoint to claims that the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increased awareness of the critical nature of many types of ‘low-skilled' work not previously recognised as essential. The study also extends previous research which has traced changes in language and its deployment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABSTRACT
In this article, we examine the use of war metaphors in Jordanian official discourse on the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21, through an analysis of videos of public statements and media releases made by Jordanian government officials at press conferences and interviews with local media outlets which were disseminated through social media. Against both the linguistic essentialism and the Western-centrism of conventional analyses of (war) metaphors, we demonstrate that Jordanian officials' framing of Covid-19 as a security threat is not just a function of the rhetorical appeal of militarised discursive responses to the pandemic, but also aligns closely with existing ideologies of the militarisation and securitisation of public life. The mobilisation of metaphor in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic should thus be understood in relation to the specific discourses that pervade the communicative channels through which it is distributed. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Contemporary Levant is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes to investigate the varying implications of the war metaphor in scientific publications discussing the COVID-19 pandemic. The corpus under study is composed of articles retrieved from the international scientific journal Nature, the weekly magazine New Scientist, and the international agency World Health Organisation. With a focus on three main characteristics of the pandemic - body health, medical solutions, and global impact of the virus - the present study asks to what extent the use of the war metaphor can vary to offer different viewpoints on the pandemic. The particular view on the virus - through metaphorical use - depends on the readers each publication targets, the pressure to find solutions, the editorial requirements, and the aim of the publication. We conclude that the war metaphor may not systematically be associated with disputable interpretations (as reported in literature), it also serves an explanatory function.
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to compare the occurrence of war metaphors in the discourse of selected titles of the Czech mainstream media and tabloids. The article pays attention to metaphor as a language tool used in communication on a pandemic. This is a quantitative analysis focused on the occurrence of ten randomly selected terms (lemmas) from war terminology occurring in the context of the keywords covid / coronavirus. The purpose of the analysis is to evaluate the frequency of their occurrence in selected tabloid and mainstream online media in the period from 1.10.2020 to 31.3.2021. The ONLINE_NOW corpus was chosen for this article as a database for the analysis performed by the method of sorting concordance lists and collocations and using corpus metadata. The analysis showed the occurrence of war metaphors in all monitored online media with the exception of one tabloid title. Metaphorical war expressions in the tabloid media contribute to the overall occurrence of the terms coronavirus and Covid-19 to a greater extent in the observed period. The most commonly used metaphor in both types of media is "the fight against coronavirus / Covid-19".
ABSTRACT
The paper attempts to show how meaning transfer may shape the image of a political leader. It analyses the translated and interpreted English versions of four speeches by President Putin on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak delivered at the beginning of the pandemic (March–June 2020). The study focuses on pragmatic phenomena like power distance between speaker and audience, building trust in the power of the state, the conceptualization of the pandemic, which shape the roles of society members and the image of the President. The analysis demonstrates that while the official written translations are close to the source speech in most respects, interpreting displays a higher negotiating intention. It shapes a positive public image of the President and the authority he represents, which the study claims to be emerging from an awareness of audience profile, the complexity of interpreting or both. Translating and interpreting on the political stage assume an interdisciplinary perception of cross-cultural and political awareness which permeates the communicative situation. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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The article examines the use of the metaphor of war in political communication on the novel COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda using two analytical tools of the social representation theory, anchoring and objectification. Drawing data for analysis from six widely televised presidential addresses to the nation on COVID-19 made by Uganda’s president, H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni during the months of March 2020 to September 2020, the article argues that during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a persistent dominant use of the metaphor of war by government representatives as a rhetorical device to communicate about and to make intelligible an emerging unknown virus as a threat that should be managed through combat behavior. In so doing, the use of the war metaphor and its implied call for combat behavior to control, manage, and eradicate the virus spread engendered consequences such as standardizing hegemonic understanding of the nature and causes of the virus as well as normalizing and legitimizing interventions that the government adopted to manage it. Copyright © 2022 Atuhura.
ABSTRACT
The study describes and analyzes the language of war in the media discourse on the subject of coronavirus. The martial rhetoric occupies a special place in discursive research, due to the global extralinguistic situation marked by open and hidden war conflicts. The epistemic paradigm of research is formed under the influence of studies of cognitive linguistics, discursive analysis, and the theory of conceptual metaphors. The scientific method consists of the determination of metaphorical expressions that demonstrate a way of reasoning about multiple issues that are reflected in the media discourse from the war perspective.
ABSTRACT
Political leaders’ discourse plays a significant role in directing the public opinion during crises. Hence, this study analyzed 71 speeches delivered by Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran (2013-2021), during the first and the second waves of COVID-19 pandemic (February 20 till August 30, 2020) as the most critical period of the pandemic attack. This study drew upon Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory as its theoretical background, and the analysis of the speeches was comprised of metaphor identification using the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP) and metaphor interpretation. The findings of the study reveal employment of metaphorical representations of coronavirus as a discursive strategy to deal with the situation. The main metaphorical representation of coronavirus was framing public cooperation and national solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic as participating in a war. As argued in this paper, the employed metaphors not only remained loyal to general war features, but they also entailed a specific sociocultural image of war for the Iranian people based on their experience and memories of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. Finally, this study recommends for future studies to include the specific sociocultural context and historical background of the addressed audience. This provides further insight into what metaphors specifically mean to the addressed audience, which is beyond general metaphor use. This study is hoped to be a small step towards bringing into spotlight the significance of sociocultural aspects and historical background as necessary information to provide in-depth insights into what makes metaphors effective communicative tools to specific audience. © 2021, Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic represented a major shock. In their effort to adapt their responses to the crisis to their own conditions of survival, governments have tended to resort to arguments that limit accountability to the population. Despite the privileged place they are presumed to have within contemporary societies, experts have been displaced from the decision-making processes of governments and delegitimized by the anti-intellectual drift favored by the way in which arguments are presented and debated in social media. At the same time, despite being perceived as capable of offering inside-out evaluations of specific phenomena and therefore capable of distinguishing between truths and big lies (and anything in-between), the role of public intellectuals seems to have been limited. The article analyses the responses of great power governments and regional powers in terms of the discursive practices deployed in the context of the covid-19 crisis, and the capacity of the aforementioned non-institutional actors to confront these discourses. As ‘editors-in-chief’, policymakers have felt passionate about war metaphors that have allowed them to deconstruct and make complex subjects accessible, and as such, to ensure a sufficient level of attention and public approval so that the fight against the enemy could begin. In addition, they have prompted the implementation of emergency measures that, in a context of geopolitical confrontation, have allowed them to evade individual responsibilities. Rather than using their knowledge to provide constructive examination of complex issues and make them accessible, so the ones who listen to them can hopefully understand the impact of specific policy preferences and minimize their own losses in the increasingly competitive environment, experts and intellectuals have seen their room for maneuver to influence policy formulations severely limited. © 2021, RUDN UNiversity. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The current COVID-19 pandemic has reactivated ancient metaphors (especially military ones) but also initiated a new vocabulary: social distancing, lockdown, self-isolation, and sheltering in place. Terminology is not ethically neutral but reflects prevailing value systems. I will argue that there are two metaphorical vocabularies at work: an authoritarian one and a liberal one. Missing is an ecological vocabulary. It has been known for a long time that emerging infectious diseases are associated with the destruction of functioning ecosystems and biodiversity. Ebola and avian influenza viruses have been significant warnings. Obviously, this pandemic will not be the last one. As the planet is our common home, the major metaphor to explore is sheltering at this home.