War and Apocalypse Metaphors in Media Discourse on the Pandemic and Earthquake in Croatia 2020/2021

Abstract

The way we talk about complex and abstract ideas is abundant in metaphors. Many research studies have shown that even the most subtle metaphor can have a significant influence on the way people try to tackle various social problems. Thus, the assumption is that metaphors are not just a simple rhetorical tool, but also have a profound effect on how we conceptualize reality and respond to important social issues. In the last two decades, scientists have studied the impact of metaphorical framing on political discourse from different research perspectives. Metaphors are often used for framing political topics, and these metaphorical frames are considered to affect the way people regard these issues, perceive the world, and act, on both the individual and collective level. In accordance with these research studies, in this paper, we will regard the metaphor as a cognitive tool that classifies our conceptual system and enables the understanding of our experiences. The objective of this paper is to examine the use of conceptual metaphors in media discourse on the corona crisis and the earthquake crisis caused by the quake in Petrinja. The research was conducted in three steps, following the methodology of critical metaphor analysis (Charteris-Black, 2004). In the first step, the identification of metaphorical expressions was performed by using a big data corpus of articles published by Croatian web-portals from the beginning of the pandemic (from January 2020 to April 2021) and after the Petrinja earthquake (from 29 December 2020). In the second step, the dominant conceptual metaphors employed in communicating the two crises were interpreted. The results of this interpretation are that war metaphors are ubiquitous in reporting on the COVID-19 disease pandemic, and the apocalypse metaphor is used in reporting on the earthquake. In the third step of the analysis, the reasons and implications of the occurrence of these metaphors are explained.