Critical Metaphor Analysis of War Metaphors in Official News Reports of COVID-19 in China

Abstract

This paper initially situates research on the conceptual metaphors based on Critical Metaphor Analysis with regard to their manifestation in public discourses. Specifically, it centers on the cognitive features and social effects of war metaphors used in the official coverage of COVID-19 pandemic in China. The war metaphors was first identified and analyzed by both manual metaphor identification and the aid of vocabulary analytic software AntConc. 3. 5. 9. Then the cognitive mechanism and social functions of the selected metaphors were analyzed in the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The findings show that: (1)despite of the possible negative emotions they might bring, war metaphors can arouse cognitively the public’s awareness of self-protection and stimulate properly the positive emotions of the public with the embedded Chinese narrative characteristics “a party in trouble, assistance comes from all sides”; (2) the application of war metaphors can function as positive guidance in conveying government policy and play an important role in soothing the public tension and help to stabilize. The adoption of war metaphors in the COVID-19 news reports in China official media can help to stimulate the positive emotions of the public, arouse the collectivism values, construct a unified epidemic prevention cognition system of the public, and play a crucial role in providing information, policy interpretation and humanistic guidance.