War Metaphors Research Articles

코로나 시대, 전쟁 은유의 수사학

This study analyzes the rhetoric of governments and the media through the concept of war metaphor in the context of COVID-19 pandemic, and examines its impact on democracy. War metaphors used as political rhetoric on COVID-19 are characterized by responses toward infected subjects based on the dichotomous division of good and evil or activation of wartime response system against an enemy. War rhetoric can take place as a strategy whereby a state intervenes and persuades extensively in the political and economic sectors. In the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, the war rhetoric by political leaders even showed aspects that go against democracy. In Hungary, the prime minister attempted his long-term seizure of power, while in Sri Lanka, government opponents were subjected to control. It came to a point where the basic procedures of democracy could not be implemented as elections were postponed or canceled in several countries. War metaphors eventually affects an individual’s daily life as well. The public perception of a crisis situation as a wartime situation entails the risk of easily accepting or taking for granted exceptional measures and restrictions on their freedom. This study points out that this approach eventually produces conflicts between marginalized groups and classes and also reinforces exclusive nationalism.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine: some readings from Italian newspapers (20 February–5 March 2022)

AbstractOver the last two years, the metaphor of war has often been used in Italy when discussing the fight against the pandemic, to describe the restrictions that have been introduced as a result, from lockdown to the Green Pass. Paradoxically, once the state of emergency ended, just as we were on the cusp of the long-awaited return to normality (to ‘peace’ in a sense), Russia's sudden invasion of Ukraine meant that war truly became part of Italians’ lives through the media. In this context, I have analysed the positions taken by the major Italian periodicals (Avvenire, Corriere della Sera, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Il Foglio, La Repubblica, La Stampa, Il Mattino di Napoli, Il Messaggero and Il Tempo di Roma) between 20 February and 5 March. What becomes clear through examination of the main articles is that the themes that would characterise the subsequent Italian debate – from a strategic, humanitarian, political, and economic point of view – were already present in the two weeks from the end of February to the beginning of March 2022.

National Image Construction of New Year Addresses by Xi Jinping from the Perspective of Conceptual Metaphor: A Corpus-based Study

The New Year Addresses by Chinese President Xi Jinping has the function of conveying New Year’s blessings and constructing a national image. Based on the conceptual metaphor theory of cognitive linguistics, this study selects the English version of New Year Addresses by President Xi Jinping from 2014 to 2021 as the research corpus and adopts the method of combining quantitative and qualitative analysis to identify the distribution of conceptual metaphors in the New Year Addresses and what kind of national image has been constructed by the main conceptual metaphor types. It is found that President Xi Jinping’s New Year Addresses mainly constructs the national image through the use of journey metaphor, construction metaphor, war metaphor, and personification metaphor. China’s image is political integrity, full of vitality, committed to world peace, and making a greater contribution to humanity.

POLITICAL METAPHOR IN CORONAVIRUS MEDIA COVERAGE

This present study is aimed at taking a look at the Covid-19 coverage in political discourse considering the metaphor-based method. This article mainly aims at examining the substantial role of metaphor as well as language in a manner we understand and converse as special metaphorical notions seem to be the fundamental mechanisms of forming actuality in the prevailing era. Discourse and cognitive analysis along with modeling, statistical and contextual analyses are taken into account to accomplish the study’s objectives. The study’s outcomes acquired demonstrate that nowadays, dominant sorts of metaphors, including war or military metaphors and catastrophe and animal ones. The mentioned metaphors are examined in political discourses on a gross scale.

“More than conquerors”: A qualitative analysis of war metaphors for patients with cancer.

e24134 Background: Limited research suggests that war metaphors may be harmful for patients with cancer. For instance, it has been claimed that the use of war metaphors is associated with increased anxiety and depression, as well as poor coping for patients with cancer. However, little is known about how patients use and perceive these metaphors. Metaphors, which are intrinsic to the human conceptual system, help articulate patients’ experiences and needs. In this study, we explored patient narratives of illness metaphors in cancer, focusing particularly on war metaphors. Methods: Fifteen patients diagnosed with various stages of lung, colorectal or breast cancer completed semi-structured qualitative interviews about their use of metaphors after their cancer diagnoses. Interviews explored war metaphors in the context of treatment decisions, aggressiveness of care, and quality of life. Patients were also provided with a curated list of metaphors and asked about their use and experience thereof. Transcribed interviews were organized and analyzed by descriptive content analysis using NVivo software. Results: The most used metaphor categories were: 1) nature (e.g., journey, season); 2) militaristic (e.g., battle, victory, fight); and 3) uncertainty (e.g., mystery, puzzle). War metaphors were frequently referenced in patients’ support communities rather than in hospital or clinician encounters. Next, all patients with non-metastatic disease (n = 7) used war metaphors to describe their illness experience. Among all patients who used metaphorical language to describe their experience (n = 14), the only ones who did not use war metaphors (n = 2) had metastatic disease; these patients found war metaphors to be unhelpful due to their sense of having no control over the outcome. Lastly, participants reported that war metaphors served the following purposes in their illness experience with cancer: 1) promoted perseverance in the face of adversity, 2) expressed optimism, and 3) allowed them to relate cancer to previous life challenges. Conclusions: The hypothesis that war metaphors are invariably counterproductive for patients appears to be misguided. Metaphors of fighting, victory and battle worked both to empower and harm patients in this study, depending on the individual patient and their prognosis. While more prospective studies with robust sample sizes are needed to elucidate the role of metaphors in the lived experience of patients with cancer, our patients suggest the need to individualize, acknowledge and explore these metaphors for cancer populations.

Of Battle and Business: Military Language in the Corporate Environment

Abstract As early as the second half of the 20th century, theoreticians and commentators in the field of business and corporate culture have started to increasingly make use of military and war metaphors when describing or analyzing business-related matters. This ongoing tendency can be explained by the fact that both military and business jargons have had similar historical trajectories and focus on similar goals and objectives. Military philosophy can furthermore offer valuable lessons and advice to any aspiring manager. To be aware of the symbiosis between military jargon and the language of business is to have a clearer overview of the impact of business practices and eventually to gain the upper hand in a domain where battle and the survival of the fittest are at the basis of all activities and endeavors. The aim of the present paper is to trace the similar trajectories in the evolution of military and business jargon and to analyze, by resorting to practical examples, the manifold similarities between the language of war and the one of business.

Lingual presentation of coronavirus in Ukrainian religious media discourse

The coronavirus pandemic has caused changes not only in public life, but has affected language systems also. The lexical structure of languages has responded to the global pandemic with many innovations. According to the results of linguistic researches, the texts in mass media have become a productive environment for the creation of neologisms. These tendencies are also noticeable in the Ukrainian language system. Besides neologisms, the linguistic realities of the coronavirus pandemic have been verbalized in various discursive practices through metaphors, the most common of which are metaphors of war. The purpose of this study is to identify the features of the linguistic presentation of coronavirus disease and related realities in the texts of religious media. The texts of Ukrainian religious figures presented in the media were the source of this study. Pandemic, the virus are endowed with the features of a living person, the ability to move, think, tokens to denote them are combined with a large number of verbs, which are named active actions, cognitive processes etc. In the texts of religious media, like in other discourses, the realities of coronavirus disease are conceptualized through lexical units that are in any way connected with war: enemy, captivity, threat, to strike, to win the war etc., rarely attested metaphors of fire, disease, marine metaphors. The linguistic representation of the coronavirus in religious texts has its own specifics. In the religious consciousness, the coronavirus is perceived as a testing, a warning, an opportunity to rethink a behavior, a lifestyle, and the consequences caused by it are often positively assessed, because they allow strengthening spiritual values. Religious texts are characterized not only by a metaphorical representation of the coronavirus itself, but by the emergence of new metaphors based on the coronavirus vocabulary that verbalize human spiritual life: the virus of selfishness, the virus of indifference, antibodies of solidarity etc. Keywords: coronavirus language, metaphor, personification, religious discourse, religious media.

Enemies or obstacles?

Abstract This study examines the use of metaphors of war and journey in a million-word corpus of Spanish-language blogs written by patients with severe mental disorders and by mental health professionals. Quantitative results indicate that both metaphors are more prevalent among patients than professionals, supporting the idea that they are mostly used in this context for communicating complex and emotionally intense experiences. From a qualitative perspective, our results show that patients use both metaphors to deal with exactly the same ontological elements of the situation (the disorder, symptoms, negative emotions, everyday problems, social prejudice, medical activity, people close to the patients and the patients themselves) but framing them differently. Further analysis shows that both metaphors have positive and negative uses in terms of emotions conveyed, empowerment and suitability for coping with the situation. In light of this, we conclude with a discussion of proposals promoting the positive uses of these metaphors.

Metaphors we Lie by: our 'War' against COVID-19.

In this paper we discuss the influence of war as a metaphor in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. After an introduction on the traditional analysis of the war metaphor, we address the social consequences of using this metaphor, a topic that has been widely debated with regard to public communication in the context of COVID-19. We pay particular attention to a theory that many intellectuals have raised: the possibility that the use of the metaphor in this context is harmful to a democratic society because it may lead citizens to accept limited civil liberties and authoritarian policies. After presenting the extensive literature on the use of the war metaphor before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the final section of the paper, we analyse experimental evidence of the effects of this metaphor. In the conclusion, we hint at open questions and suggest that the current evidence does not support claims of direct liberticidal influence.

Metaphors of War in Effective and Ineffective Coping of Medical Directors of COVID-19 Wards in Public Hospitals.

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged medical professionals worldwide with an unprecedented need to provide care under conditions of complexity, uncertainty, and danger. These conditions, coupled with the unrelenting stress of overwhelming workloads, exhaustion, and decision-making fatigue, have forced clinicians to generate coping mechanisms. This qualitative study explored the use of metaphors as a coping mechanism by clinical directors of COVID-19 wards in Israeli public general hospitals while they were exposed to death and trauma throughout the pandemic's first wave in Israel (March to June 2020). The study employs discourse methodology and metaphor mapping analysis to capture the personal, organizational, and social dimensions of effective and ineffective processes of coping with an extreme health crisis. Analysis revealed that the metaphors that clinical directors used reflect a dual process of mediating and generating the social construction of meaning and facilitating effective and ineffective coping. Effective coping was facilitated by war metaphors that created a sense of mission and meaningfulness at both the organizational and the individual levels. War metaphors that generated a sense of isolation and sacrifice intensified helplessness and fear, which undermined coping. We propose actionable recommendations to enhance effective coping for individuals and organizations in this ongoing pandemic.

Conceptual Metaphor in COVID-19 Speeches of the American President Joe Biden

This qualitative and quantitative study aims at shedding the light on the use of metaphor in COVID-19 speeches of the American President Joe Biden. Metaphor is considered to be one of the common linguistic strategies that are pervasively used in different types of discourse including speech. This study focuses on analyzing metaphor according to their source domains and to investigate their functions using Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) as a semantic cognitive approach. As opposed to the decorative approach, CMT states that metaphor “plays a central role in thought, and is indispensable to both thought and language” (Degani, 2005). This approach was first elaborated by Lakoff and Johnson and is the most accepted theory that relates metaphor to cognition. The study aims at answering the following questions: (1) What are the most frequent source-domain categories of conceptual metaphors used in COVID-19 speeches of Joe Biden?; (2) What is the density of metaphor in various speeches delivered by Joe Biden? and finally (3) What are the main functions of metaphors found in Biden’s speeches? The findings revealed that the most common used source domains are Unity, Object, person, spatial and War metaphors, respectively. Moreover, the study has found that Urges America to Wear Masks is denser in metaphor than COVID-19 Response& Vaccine and Biden's Speech on Corona Virus. Finally, metaphor is used for several functions such as simplifying, convincing people and for emotive functions.

Is Death the Enemy? Reconsidering the Significance of Metaphor in End of Life.

Metaphors are important ways to language meaning and illustrate imaginative thinking for the healthcare disciplines. Normative ethics focus on metaphors of war, torture, and art that guide thinking in end-of-life decision-making. This article begins a discussion of novel, imaginative thinking for consideration of metaphors such as holding on-letting go as paradoxical ways of being and quality during end of life. The discussion will be viewed through a case study utilizing the philosophical, theoretical lens of humanbecoming.

“World-beating” Pandemic Responses: Ironical, Sarcastic, and Satirical Use of War and Competition Metaphors in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic tempted some governments to promise to wage “war” against it and implement “world-beating” control mechanisms. In view of their limited success, such claims soon came in for massive criticism, which turned their hyperbolic implicatures and figurative framing against them. Our paper focuses on such cases of “metaphor reversal” within the context of the British public debate. Drawing on examples from a corpus of media texts, we identify several types of the dissociation, including irony (i.e., putting the figurative claims’ implicatures in doubt implicitly), sarcasm (i.e., explicitly decrying their plausibility) and satire (i.e., exhibiting their presumed absurdity), with reference to theory models of irony (echo, pretense, mental space structuring). In conclusion, we argue that the seesaw of exchanges between exaggerated figurative claims of (imminent) success made by government politicians and their sarcastic-satirical debunking by media and opposition politicians has an ambivalent effect on public discourse. On the one hand, it highlights contrasts in policy and policy assessment and may also have entertainment value, but on the other hand, it conveys experiences of repeated, serial exposure of hyperbolic government rhetoric. This in turn may lead to an erosion of trust in official communication as being unrealistic, which may foster beliefs in conspiracy theories.

What Else besides War: Deliberate Metaphors Framing COVID-19 in Chinese Online Newspaper Editorials

ABSTRACT Through metaphor, we gain distinctive perspectives on reality and communicate in new ways, especially when we use metaphor intentionally. The COVID-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020, causing significant harm to people’s lives worldwide. This article moves the focus from the ubiquitous war metaphor used in the pandemic to other deliberate metaphors identified in five Chinese news media, i.e., China Daily, People’s Daily, Huanqiu, Cankaoxiaoxi, and Xinhuanet. 59 Chinese online newspaper editorials were collected between 22 January 2020 and 22 July 2020. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, we investigate season, disease and medicine, and homework metaphors. We contend that (a) originating from common bodily experiences in the physical environment, season metaphors have emotional valences and promoted public confidence when the epidemic was severe and urged caution when it was mitigated, (b) connecting physical and socio-cultural worlds, disease and medicine metaphors could simplify and evaluate social issues besides formulating editorials’ political stances, and (c) based on shared socio-cultural knowledge, homework metaphors call for more democratic and practical governance in disease control. This study reveals how these metaphors accomplish useful pragmatic purposes in the pandemic in particular contexts.

A Critical Metaphor Analysis of Anti-telefraud Public Legal Education Discourse

Nowadays, news media provides an important platform for knowledge dissemination of public legal education (PLE) and combating fraud is one of the most important topics in PLE news reports. WAR, ANIMAL and CONTAINER metaphors are three important metaphors that frequently appear in anti-telefraud PLE discourse. The present paper analyzes the role of the three metaphors in English and Chinese anti-telefraud PLE discourse based on the framework of critical metaphor analysis. Specifically speaking, the paper focuses on two research questions: 1) How WAR, ANIMAL and CONTAINER metaphors are used in PLE discourse that serves for anti-fraud activity. 2) Whether, if so, how do the metaphors achieve the function of evaluation and persuasion in PLE discourse. Our analysis shows that WAR, ANIMAL and CONTAINER metaphors construct different metaphor scenarios in anti-telefraud PLE discourse, highlighting different aspects of telecom fraud. Moreover, WAR, ANIMAL, and CONTAINER metaphors, as a very powerful tool for framing reality of telecom fraud and anti-telefraud topic, play an important role in simplifying and facilitating the understanding of telecom fraud and anti-telefraud process; they also enhance the effects of persuasion by its role of expressing “evaluative stances” on the perceived reality.

Metaphors of cancer in the Arabic language: An analysis of the use of metaphors in the online narratives of breast cancer patients

Abstract This study explores the use of metaphors in the narratives of breast cancer patients in online magazine websites in the Arabic language. It aims to find similarities and/or differences between English and Arabic in respect of the metaphorical constructions of cancer experiences. The corpus of the study consists of 13,705 words in 19 narratives in Arabic. We used the metaphor identification procedure of Pragglejaz Group (2007) to detect the metaphors in the corpus. We focused on the role of metaphor in constructing our experience of cancer, and examined which metaphors are more frequent in the construction of the cancer experience. The results of the study revealed that there is a great similarity between Arabic and English in respect of the metaphors used to construct the cancer experience; the patients have framed their cancer situation via WAR and/or JOURNEY metaphors, with War metaphors more frequently used than Journey Metaphors. The findings also indicate that the Arabic narratives tended to include a stronger religious framework, constructing cancer as a kind of Trial by Ordeal in which one proves one’s firm faith through patience and acceptance of fate.

“Waging War” for Doing Good? The Fortune Global 500’s Framing of Corporate Responses to COVID-19 Pandemic

This study examined corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication and pandemic responses of large corporations across multiple industries in a global context. Specifically, this research (1) described the state of CSR communication during the pandemic, and (2) identified how top global Fortune 500 corporations framed their COVID-19 pandemic responses as part of their social advocacy. An in-depth content analysis of the corporate communication messages revealed that top global corporations positioned their pandemic responses as an extension of their ongoing CSR commitment, prioritizing their philanthropic responsibilities over the ethical, legal, and economic responsibilities. They often relied on war metaphors, portraying the virus as the “common enemy” and employees as “heroes,” and highlighted their leadership role in the global “fight” against the pandemic as a “partner” of governments, “protector” of employees, and “supporter’’ of the communities. Analyzing a large data set from a global perspective, this study provides a comprehensive look at the state of CSR communication during the pandemic and demonstrates how corporations as authoritative societal actors help shape the ongoing discourse on the global COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the study makes several practical and theoretical contributions to sustainability research and our understanding of the evolving relationship between business and society.

It must not be a war: The virality of war metaphors in the pandemic language

Si presenterà in questo articolo una riflessione sulla cornice retorica bellica dominante in Italia durante la pandemia da Covid-19. La guerra causando sofferenza, privazione, devastazione e morte, rappresenta una minaccia costante all’ integrità fisica delle persone. Dopo l’epidemia di Sars del 2003, l’immagine drammatica della guerra che mette in pericolo la salute e la vita delle persone, è ritornata prepotentemente alla ribalta nel 2020. Al repertorio delle metafore belliche hanno attinto diffusamente non solo medici, politici, giornalisti, opinionisti, ma anche comuni cittadini. Dopo un excursus storico sul ruolo della metafora nella poesia e nei linguaggi specialistici, si passerà ad una riflessione basata sull’evidenza di un microcorpus nato dalla raccolta di duecento titoli di articoli di giornale, video, inchieste, sondaggi, libri e interviste collezionati sul web. I titoli selezionati sono una dimostrazione tangibile della pervasiva propensione degli italiani al ricorso alle metafore belliche e al lessico della guerra nella comunicazione quotidiana, giornalistica, politica e scientifica. Accomunare due fenomeni come la “pandemia” e la “guerra” è un’attitudine molto pericolosa. Si è visto infatti come quest’aggressività verbale abbia prodotto risultati non molto rassicuranti. Ci si auspica, pertanto, l’adozione in futuro di scelte lessicali e metaforiche meno belligeranti e violente e la loro sostituzione con una dimensione metaforica ispirata a principi e valori pacifisti, che incoraggino lo spirito di collaborazione, unità, solidarietà e responsabilità civile.

A conversation about the state in pandemic times

Established ideas about state responsibility and state violence are placed in a new light in times characterized as states of emergency. The following conversation addresses the role of the state in the safeguarding of public health, taking its departure in media debates and political debates about state responsibility in two countries that have been criticized for not taking strong enough measures to protect the very futuriority of the nation in times of a pandemic Sweden and Nicaragua. Both countries have been castigated for avoiding total lockdown and for having taken a passive approach to what Wendy Brown has called “the political management of the virus” (Brown 2020). At the same time, the rhetoric used to describe their respective strategies has differed vastly in dialogue we explore notions about governance, biopolitics and necropolitics as they are articulated and negotiated in national contexts that claim the label social democracies. One of the points of departure is that while the response to Covid-19 is often described in war metaphors, and hence as a state of emergency, the unjust and unequal distribution of life and death is by no means exceptional.

The Metaphor of War in Political Discourse on COVID-19 in Uganda

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.