Author(s): Xiaoqi LIU

Title: HOW DID COVID-19 PANDEMIC EVOLVE WITH TIME?

Source: Sz. Simon, P. Baka, A. Litovkina (eds.): 15th International Conference of J. Selye University. Language and Literacy Sections. Conference Proceedings

ISBN: 978-80-8122-497-3

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36007/4973.2024.43

Publisher: J. Selye University, Komárno, Slovakia

PY, pages: 2024, 43-61

Published on-line: 2024

Language: en

Abstract: Covid-19 pandemic broke out all around the world. As a concept that is deeply connected to everyone’s wellbeing, it is heatedly talked metaphorically online. It would be meaningful to figure out how it has been conceptualized in a systematical manner. This paper studies COVID-19 PANDEMIC metaphors in Chinese language in the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory from a diachronical point of view. Datum are collected from Network News Broadcast, sponsored by CCTV-1, China, the text version of 2020.1.20-2020.12.31. 561 articles and 41,144,754 words in total are included in the corpus. The method used to identify the metaphors is Metaphor Identification Procedure VU University Amsterdam (MIPVU). Based on the conceptual metaphor theory and highlighting and hiding theory, the paper categorized COVID-19 PANDEMIC metaphors into four themes: the SPREAD metaphor, the WAR metaphor, STRATEGY metaphor, metaphors used to summarize the experience. A new-generation software package #LancsBox X is used to analyze the corpus data diachronically. The result shows that WAR metaphor is the most frequent used one. HITTING FORCE metaphor used to describe the influence of economy is the only metaphor that did not lose focus all the year. During summer season, metaphor usage is much less. The usage of STRATEGY metaphor goes down from spring to summer and rises up when it comes into the winter season again. The result proves that the context plays a vital role in the appearance of new matephors and what metaphors are more popular or prominent. With the different season, the intense of the disease influences the focus of people greatly. But the influence of economy has received relatively stable attention all the year round.

Keywords: COVID-19 PANDEMIC metaphor; Conceptual metaphor theory; highlighting and hiding; diachronic; context

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