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

IF 2.2 3区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Metaphor and Symbol Pub Date : 2022-03-31 DOI:10.1080/10926488.2021.1948333

Cun Zhang, Zhengjun Lin, Shengxi Jin

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引用次数: 7

Abstract

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.

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除了战争，还有什么:中国网络报纸社论中有意构建COVID-19的隐喻

通过隐喻，我们获得了对现实的独特视角，并以新的方式进行交流，尤其是当我们有意使用隐喻时。2019冠状病毒病大流行于2020年初爆发，给全球人民的生命造成重大危害。本文将重点从大流行中普遍使用的战争隐喻转移到五家中国新闻媒体中发现的其他故意隐喻，即《中国日报》、《人民日报》、《环球报》、《财经日报》和新华网。我们在2020年1月22日至2020年7月22日期间收集了59篇中国在线报纸的社论。我们运用定量和定性相结合的方法，对季节、疾病和医学以及家庭作业隐喻进行了调查。我们认为，(a)季节隐喻源于自然环境中的共同身体体验，具有情感价值，在疫情严重时促进了公众信心，在疫情减轻时敦促人们谨慎;(b)将物质世界和社会文化世界联系起来，疾病和医学隐喻可以简化和评估社会问题，同时形成社论的政治立场;(c)基于共享的社会文化知识。家庭作业隐喻要求在疾病控制方面实行更加民主和实用的治理。这项研究揭示了这些隐喻如何在大流行的特定背景下实现有用的实用目的。

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来源期刊

Metaphor and Symbol Multiple-

CiteScore

2.90

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Metaphor and Symbol: A Quarterly Journal is an innovative, multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the study of metaphor and other figurative devices in language (e.g., metonymy, irony) and other expressive forms (e.g., gesture and bodily actions, artworks, music, multimodal media). The journal is interested in original, empirical, and theoretical research that incorporates psychological experimental studies, linguistic and corpus linguistic studies, cross-cultural/linguistic comparisons, computational modeling, philosophical analyzes, and literary/artistic interpretations. A common theme connecting published work in the journal is the examination of the interface of figurative language and expression with cognitive, bodily, and cultural experience; hence, the journal''s international editorial board is composed of scholars and experts in the fields of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, literature, and media studies.