Metaphorical representation of the pandemics in the German press

Abstract

Metaphorical representation of the pandemic in the German press Theoretical background The key role of metaphors in shaping not only cognition but also the emotional attitude towards specific phenomena is particularly relevant in specialised domains directly affecting the lives of individuals, such as medicine (e.g. Sontag 1990; Schiefer 2005; Schachtner 1999; 2001). According to the traditional Conceptual Metaphor Theory, as it was originally formulated by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), metaphors always imply a cognitive cross-domain mapping, which is in turn reflected in language use: Abstract phenomena (the target domains) are conceptualised in terms of others, typically more concrete (the source domains), and they are linguistically expressed accordingly. Moreover, those metaphors are embodied, i.e. they rely on bodily experiences. The relationship between emotions and metaphors can be therefore analysed from different perspectives. On the one hand, emotions themselves can be considered as abstract categories expressed through metaphors: An example could be the conceptualisation of anger as hot fluid in a container (also implying that the body itself is a container) or as fire (Kövecses 2008: 381), which in turn originates from the way this emotion is physically experienced in the human body. On the other hand, emotions can be awakened by specific metaphors, especially when they are used “deliberately”, i.e. for specific communicative purposes (for the pragmatic approach to metaphor use and the distinction between “deliberate” and “non-deliberate” use see Steen 2008; 2015). The emotional response to metaphors in comparison with their literal counterparts has been investigated in the field of psycholinguistics and data suggesting that metaphors evoke “greater emotional response” (Semino 2021: 51) have been collected (e.g. Citron / Goldberg 2014). A study by Scherer et al. (2015) highlighted for example how “metaphorical descriptions of influenza (as a beast, riot, army, or weed) increased expressions of willingness to be vaccinated, as opposed to a literal description” (Semino 2021: 51). Given its important psychological impact, the language used in the media to portrait the Covid-19 pandemics and its political, economic as well as social consequences elicited (and still elicits) strong emotions (such as fear of the virus and the consequences of the pandemics, but also loneliness due to social distancing), which are, in turn, mostly connected to metaphors. The most famous metaphor used in medical communication is for example the war-metaphor (e.g. Bauer 2006; Semino 2021; Sontag 1990): Not surprisingly, this metaphor, which is deeply rooted in medical communication and has shown (often negative) psychological entailments (Sontag 1990), has been also used to describe the pandemics caused by the Virus SARS-CoV-2. In this regard, Semino (2021) recently presented the data collected in the “#ReframeCovid” (https://sites.google.com/view/reframecovid/home), aiming at finding alternatives to military metaphors, as this latter have been in this case criticised “for inappropriately personifying the virus as a malevolent opponent, creating excessive anxiety, potentially legitimizing authoritarian governmental measures, and implying that those who die did not fight hard enough” (Semino 2021: 50), in other words for the negative emotions they elicit and the potentially dangerous consequences that exploiting those emotions may have for the individual, social and political life. The study Moving from the theoretical assumptions outlined, the aim of this pilot study is to identify on the one hand the metaphors used to describe the first months of the pandemics in the German magazines “Der Spiegel” and “Die Zeit” and on the other hand to highlight their (possible) emotional implications. The metaphorical use of lexical units is identified according to the Metaphor Identification Procedure (Pragglajez Group 2007). Following levels of analysis and research questions will be addressed: • The source and target domains: What metaphors are used and what phenomena do they conceptualise? Are those metaphors novel or do they instantiate highly conventionalised, well-established framing patterns? • The emotional level of investigation: What emotions can be linked to those metaphors? Are emotions themselves directly addressed or expressed through metaphors? • The relationship with non-verbal elements: Are there visual metaphors? Are the verbal metaphors also linked to images? The corpus consists in articles published by „Der Spiegel“ and “Die Zeit” in March and April 2020, i.e. during the first lockdown established to face the pandemics.