A note on the career of metaphorical domains

One of most dominant conceptual metaphors used to talk about the COVID-19 across languages and cultures is the war metaphor, but many other metaphors have been attested, exploiting a wide range of source domains. It appears, however, that there is a sort of evolutionary movement concerning the frequency with which particular source domains are used, progressing first towards more aggressive, war-like concepts, then after a sort of culmination in the spring of 2020, towards other related concepts, as the epidemic turned into a pandemic, and as new waves of infections emerged. However, we can now observe the beginnings of a new cycle: the domain that has so far been conceptualized metaphorically in terms of other source domains is now beginning to emancipate itself, becoming itself a source domain. Metaphorically speaking, when we study this switch, we study not the career of a metaphor, but the career of a domain (which in our opinion is even more exciting than the former enterprise). The aim of this article is to shed some light on this incipient trend by taking a look at the constellation of two (among many possible) factors that may have facilitated this mutation: the phenomenon of domain homogenization (towards a negative paragon) as a semantic catalyst and the family of XY(Z) constructions as the formal catalyst.

Microbial Empires: Active Transmission Strategies and Postcolonial Critique

In this chapter Taylor-Pirie illuminates how the microbiological imagination made its mark on anxious imperial fictions by close reading H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) and John Masefield’s Multitude and Solitude (1909) alongside parasitologists’ characterisations of parasite-vector-host relationships. The anthropocentric semantics of war, violence, and criminality characterised tropical illness as another form of colonial insurrection, bolstering the biopolitical power of medicine as an extension of the disciplinary law-and-order state. She interrogates the collision of the ‘medicine as war’ metaphor with a medicalised concept of ‘the Other’ to think through biomedical and national identity—as well as the discomforting agency of non-human vectors—in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald’s ‘Wingéd Death’ (1934), and the poetry and correspondence of parasitologists. Taylor-Pirie examines how vengeful insects, alien invasions, microbial villains, and the supernatural gave shape to the anxiety that Britain’s geopolitical relationships were immersing the imperial capital in a global marketplace of pathogens. By excavating the medical and political contexts of popular cultural forms like the vampire, she historicises lexes of contagion and parasitism that persist in contemporary political discourse surrounding immigration.

The Invisible Frames Affecting Wartime Investigations

What are the invisible frames affecting fact-finding processes during armed conflicts? In this chapter I examine normative, cognitive, and legal frames shaping the outcomes of wartime investigations. First, I examine the reliance on the fog of war metaphor to justify practices of unknowing. Secondly, I analyse the role of legal ontology and epistemology in shaping the narrative of military actions. Thirdly, I survey cognitive and motivational biases influencing the collection and construction of facts during armed conflicts. Based on this interdisciplinary framework, I analyse data from the Israeli investigation of the targeted killing of Hamas Leader Salah Shehadeh. The analysis suggests that the combination of future-focused legal epistemology, cognitive and motivational biases, and the fog of war metaphor, generates law-fulfilling prophecies: a decision-making dynamic producing normative evaluations that are consistent with the legal requirements. The outcome is legitimization of otherwise unlawful actions, and perpetuation of faulty processes and human insecurity.

COVID-19: Communication Strategies during the Pandemic

The profound cultural and communicational changes brought by internet and social media platforms in the last two decades have had major repercussion in the conceptualization of the world of information and many of its dynamics. In the last decade we have a conspicuous crescent amount of scientific literature focused on social media environments and, consequently, many new fields of application and research studies have spread. Social media platforms possess an accessible democratic nature that opens to everyone the territories once controlled by the mass media, official sources of political parties, organizations, and governmental institutions. In this article we will explore some of these peculiar dynamics and phenomena examining how social media have been involved by and have contributed to constructing the social imaginary and the conceptual frame of the current global pandemic caused by Coronavirus. We will also analyze the use of the war metaphor made by many politicians referring to COVID-19 in order to shape public understanding. We also aim to demonstrate that structural changes in communication, made possible by the digital dimension of social media together with the narrative-subjective approach to the facts have undermined the epistemological basis of truth as a realistic representation of the world. Keywords: communication, COVID-19, fake news, infodemic, post-truth

Casualties of the World War II metaphor: women’s reproductive health fighting for narrative inclusion in COVID-19

While the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, politicians and media outlets in the USA have compared the pandemic with World War II (WWII). Though women’s reproductive health has been affected by both COVID-19 and WWII, these specific health needs are not included in either event’s mainstream narrative. This article explores the pandemic’s war metaphor through the lens of women’s reproductive health, arguing for a reframing of the metaphor. Narrative-building determines how health needs are perceived and addressed. A modification of the WWII metaphor can ensure that the narrative formulating around COVID-19 is inclusive of the women’s reproductive health needs that are eminently present.

Communicating Illness: Depictions of Mental Illness and Cancer in Canadian News Media

This Major Research Paper (MRP) investigates how mental illness and physical illness are portrayed in Canadian print media and analyzes if and how this contributes to the social stigmatization of mental illness. The MRP explores the following questions: What metaphoric and figurative language is used by the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail to depict cancer and mental illness? How is authority depicted in newspaper articles about mental illness and physical illness in the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail? What types of stories about cancer and mental illness are most commonly published by the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail? A discourse analysis was used to analyze the ways both illnesses were consciously and unconsciously characterized in 58 articles from two of Canada’s most widely circulated newspapers. The quoted authorities and dominant story types were recorded in an attempt to further reveal how both illnesses are framed by the Canadian news media. The results indicated that the most commonly used metaphor within the cancer discourse was the war metaphor. Mental illness was commonly characterized as a loss of control. Patients were quoted significantly more often in articles about cancer than mental illness, suggesting that those with mental illness are not given a prominent voice in characterizing their own illness. Cancer stories were often related to new research. However, crime was most commonly associated with mental illness. These results frame cancer as illness that can be heroically battled collectively. On the contrary, mental illness is framed as a hopeless, personal affliction. These results may suggest that news media depictions of mental illness contribute to the stigmatization of the illness.

Communicating Illness: Depictions of Mental Illness and Cancer in Canadian News Media

This Major Research Paper (MRP) investigates how mental illness and physical illness are portrayed in Canadian print media and analyzes if and how this contributes to the social stigmatization of mental illness. The MRP explores the following questions: What metaphoric and figurative language is used by the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail to depict cancer and mental illness? How is authority depicted in newspaper articles about mental illness and physical illness in the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail? What types of stories about cancer and mental illness are most commonly published by the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail? A discourse analysis was used to analyze the ways both illnesses were consciously and unconsciously characterized in 58 articles from two of Canada’s most widely circulated newspapers. The quoted authorities and dominant story types were recorded in an attempt to further reveal how both illnesses are framed by the Canadian news media. The results indicated that the most commonly used metaphor within the cancer discourse was the war metaphor. Mental illness was commonly characterized as a loss of control. Patients were quoted significantly more often in articles about cancer than mental illness, suggesting that those with mental illness are not given a prominent voice in characterizing their own illness. Cancer stories were often related to new research. However, crime was most commonly associated with mental illness. These results frame cancer as illness that can be heroically battled collectively. On the contrary, mental illness is framed as a hopeless, personal affliction. These results may suggest that news media depictions of mental illness contribute to the stigmatization of the illness.

A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF WAR METAPHOR IN RUSSIAN AND CHINESE NEWS HEADLINES OF NEW MEDIA IN THE CONTEXT OF CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS

Introduction. Cognitive linguistics believes that metaphor is a way of human thinking and a powerful tool for cognition. In other words, the theory of cognitive metaphor believes that metaphor is not only a rhetorical technique, but also a way of human cognition, which affects the form of human thinking. In news headlines, metaphors are even more commonly used. In the current rapid development of new media, the first visual impact of news headlines on the audience plays a vital role in the spread of articles and the amount of reading. Based on the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphor, this work compares the war metaphors in sports news headlines of Russian and Chinese of new media, attempting to analyze the similarities and differences in the use of metaphors, which helps illuminate the complex, dynamic, and nuanced functions of metaphor in cognition in sports news headlines, and in headlines of new media in particular. Material and methods. Since the 21st century, especially in the past 10 years, with the popularization of computers and the Internet, coupled with the technical support of 5G communications, new media has developed, popularized and improved rapidly.

Does the COVID-19 war metaphor influence reasoning?

In recent times, many alarm bells have begun to sound: the metaphorical presentation of the COVID-19 emergency as a war might be dangerous, because it could affect the way people conceptualize the pandemic and react to it, leading citizens to endorse authoritarianism and limitations to civil liberties. The idea that conceptual metaphors actually influence reasoning has been corroborated by Thibodeau and Boroditsky, who showed that, when crime is metaphorically presented as a beast, readers become more enforcement-oriented than when crime is metaphorically framed as a virus. Recently, Steen, Reijnierse and Burgers replied that this metaphorical framing effect does not seem to occur and suggested that the question should be rephrased about the conditions under which metaphors do or do not influence reasoning. In this paper, we investigate whether presenting the COVID-19 pandemic as a war affects people’s reasoning about the pandemic. Data collected suggest that the metaphorical framing effect does not occur by default. Rather, socio-political individual variables such as speakers’ political orientation and source of information favor the acceptance of metaphor congruent entailments: right-wing participants and participants relying on independent sources of information are those more conditioned by the COVID-19 war metaphor, thus more inclined to prefer bellicose options.