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Metaphors and pandemics: Spanish Flu and Coronavirus
in US newspapers. A case-study
Dario Del Fante, Centro Nazionale Ricerche - Istituto di Linguistica
Computazionale “Antonio Zampolli” (dario.delfante@ilc.cnr.it)
Abstract
The international outbreak of Coronavirus has challenged the stability of our contemporary
societies. However, this is not the first time that humanity is facing a global pandemic. The
1918 Spanish Flu pandemic led to one of the most lethal pandemics. Metaphors play a
fundamental role in influencing how we think and talk about health and illness. With an
understanding of how the Coronavirus and the Spanish Flu are metaphorically represented in
newspaper discourse, it would be easier to shed light on the linguistic process through which
metaphors work and to understand to what extent socio-historical-cultural conditions may
affect the actualisation of a metaphor. This paper shows that metaphors are consistently
present in both time contexts and Coronavirus and Spanish Flu are similarly metaphorically
represented. This might suggest the existence of a rhetoric of pandemics which goes beyond
the specific socio-cultural and political context: a response to a threat as a pandemic is deeply
related with human nature.
Der internationale Ausbruch des Coronavirus hat unser Leben radikal verändert und die
Stabilität unserer heutigen Gesellschaften in Frage gestellt. Es ist jedoch nicht das erste Mal,
dass die Menschheit mit einer globalen Pandemie konfrontiert ist. Die Spanische Grippe von
1918 führte zu einer der tödlichsten Pandemien aller Zeiten. Bei der Frage, wie wir über
Gesundheit und Krankheit denken und sprechen, spielen Metaphern eine bedeutende Rolle.
Wenn man versteht, wie das Coronavirus und die Spanische Grippe im Zeitungsdiskurs
metaphorisch dargestellt werden, ist es einfacher, den sprachlichen Prozess zu beleuchten,
durch den Metaphern wirken, und zu verstehen, inwieweit sozio-historisch-kulturelle
Bedingungen die Aktualisierung einer Metapher beeinflussen können. Die Arbeit zeigt, dass
Metaphern in beiden Zeitkontexten durchgängig vorhanden sind und das Coronavirus und
die Spanische Grippe in ähnlicher Weise metaphorisch dargestellt werden. Dies könnte darauf
hindeuten, dass es eine Pandemie-Rhetorik gibt, die über den spezifischen soziokulturellen
und politischen Kontext hinausgeht: eine Reaktion auf eine Bedrohung in Form einer
Pandemie, die tief mit der menschlichen Natur verbunden ist.
1. Introduction
On 31 December 2019, Chinese health authorities reported a cluster of
pneumonia cases of unknown aetiology in the city of Wuhan (Hubei province,
China). On 9 January 2020, the Chinese centre for disease control and prevention
identified a novel virus relative to the family of coronavirus, first provisionally
named 2019-nCoV, then changed to SARS-CoV-2, as the causative agent of these
cases. On 11 February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that
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the respiratory disease caused by 2019-nCoV had been officially named COVID-
19 or Coronavirus.
The international outbreak of Covid-19 has radically changed our lives and
challenged the stability of society today causing a looming pessimism within
scientific medicine and growing distrust of our neighbours. The high intensities
of world population mobility have strongly impacted the spread of the virus
(Yang et al. 2020), with unprecedented containment and lockdown measures
being applied. At the time of writing and, despite the vaccination programme
having already started in many different nations, what has been called a third
“wave” of contagions is threatening many countries – the pandemic is thus still
underway. This is, however, not the first-time humanity has faced an epidemic
or pandemic: for example, the plague, Asian flu, Swine flu, Ebola, AIDS, Mad
Cow disease, SARS, Avian flu, and Zika are some of the most famous diseases
which have plagued the world (Snowden 2019). Almost 100 years ago, the 1918
Spanish Flu pandemic – or Influenza – caused by the virus H1N1, represented
one of the most lethal pandemics in history. According to Walters, “it ranks with
the plague of Justinian and the medieval black death as one of the three most
devastating plagues to ever strike mankind” (1978: 856). The influenza occurred
between 1918 and 1920 within a world still mainly interested in understanding
the fate of the earth in the aftermath of World War I, infecting “one-fifth of the
world’s population and [killing] some 25 million people, including an estimated
600,000 American citizens” (Hume 2000: 899). There are in particular some
similarities between the Spanish Flu and Coronavirus that make this
comparison worth noting: in terms of similarities, according to Robinson (2020:
1), both pandemics exceeded the capacities of prevailing healthcare and public
health systems of our societies, and are also both transmittable via respiratory
droplets and the surfaces they land on. Additionally, there had previously been
no known cure for either pandemic as the viruses causing the disease were new
to the world of medicine with no proven means of complete immunity, whilst
both diseases attacked people indiscriminately: wealthy and poorer people
alike, people living in both city centres and suburbs; in terms of the differences
between them, the viruses responsible for both pandemics belong to two
different categories: the H1N1 is a subtype of Influenza A virus, whilst SARSCoV-
2 is a subtype of the Coronaviruses.
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From a historical perspective, the 1918-1920 and the contemporary sociopolitical
contexts are also markedly different, as obvious as it may be to say. On
the one hand, the 1918-1920 world was still dealing with the aftermath of the
terrible experience of World War I. The state of supportive medical care in 1918-
20 was not as advanced as today, especially with regard to medical knowledge
of virology. On the other hand, the modern world is based on an intertwining,
interdependent system of relationships between countries, and a global, open
infrastructure such as that this allows for a free and fast flow of goods, services
and people which comes with a drastic downside: expediting the spread of a
virus. In terms of age groups, young people were mostly affected by the Spanish
Flu, whilst the elderly seem to be more susceptible to the coronavirus, but
among these similarities and differences, one specific aspect plays an important
role in emphasizing what makes comparing the two so pertinent: the differences
in the press coverage given to each pandemic. The Spanish influenza is often
recognised as the “forgotten pandemic” (Crosby 2003), perhaps due to its
occurring during World War I, the latter of which would have had a stronger
grip on the press and people’s attention, given the presence of wartime
censorship (Crosby 2003: 27–28; Kupperberg 2008: 61), whereas the Coronavirus
has received a massive amount of devoted attention by the press (Krawczyk et
al. 2020) and “appears to have largely been supplanted and displaced rather
than combined and connected with the attention paid to climate change and
other societal challenges” (Pearman et al. 2021: e6), taking almost all interest
from the press. This notable difference between these two historical contexts is
the basis of this study.
In light of the above, the way in which the two different pandemic events have
been discursively represented by the press will be examined, with particular
focus on the metaphorical language, as “when faced with novel scientific issues,
the media relies on metaphors and commonplace images to conceptualise and
communicate about them” (Ribeiro et al. 2018: 138). According to Semino (2021:
51), a metaphor consists of a linguistic and psychological process whereby a
generally abstract, subjective and sensitive experience, corresponding to a
target domain, is understood as a more concrete, image-rich and intersubjectively
accessible experience that corresponds to the source domain; in this
case pandemics and illness (both physical and mental) are a kind of subjective,
sensitive experience that tends to be talked and conceptualised. Both the media
and political leaders during the coronavirus pandemic have regularly used
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metaphorical expressions to represent the virus as an ‘invisible enemy’, as a
‘tsunami on health services’, and a ‘marathon to be endured’. Some examples
can be found in the American, English and Italian online press where military
terminology is used figuratively:
 “This is like a war: view from Italy's coronavirus frontline” – (The Guardian
– 17/03/2020)
 “On the frontline against Covid-19 in Ethiopia” – (The Guardian –
07/09/2020)
 “Coronavirus, al fronte di Rogoredo: diario di un medico di base che visita
dietro un vetro” – (L’Espresso – 20/03/2020)
 “How Flu Shots Can Help in the Fight Against Covid-19”- (The New York
Times – 15/09/2020)
The decision to analyse newspapers is based on the idea that we credit the press
with playing a fundamental role in the dissemination of knowledge for the
general public. According to Schudson (1996: 38), a news story is not reality
itself but “a transcription, and any transcription is a transformation, a
simplification, and a reduction”. Newspapers are responsible for creating the
mental worlds in which we live, rather than in the reproduction of the “real
world” we relate to. Given the surge in disinformation and misinformation
phenomena, including fake news (Guo/Vargo 2020; Shu et al. 2020), the role of
newspapers is essential for gathering and filtering information, particularly in
relation to health communication where the truthfulness is a vital aspect of for
each news story.
Since many aspects of a disease – for example, a virus and its spread
– are not visible to the naked eye and difficult to understand by nonexperts,
media reporting is for most people the prime source of health
information; through the choice of language and images the media
make the invisible visible influencing imaginaries, opinions and, in
turn, responses to a health crisis (Jaworska 2021: 26).
This implies that, by using certain figurative metaphorical expressions, to
describe and inform people of such emotion-inducing phenomena, newspapers
might affect – to a large extent – how people understand, experience and finally
react to the virus. Thus, considering that public opinions are reflected in the
news, and that newspapers are important influencers of people’s perspectives
on reality, by analysing the metaphorical representation of two different
pandemics in newspapers in two different time periods, we might be able to
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define to some extent how two pandemics are experienced and conceptualised.
With an understanding of how Covid-19 and the Spanish Flu are metaphorically
represented within newspaper discourse, it would be easier to explore the
linguistic process through which metaphors work in order to understand
whether the metaphors used to describe Covid-19 are unique or simply a typical
feature of communication during a pandemic, as well as to understand the
extent to which context might play a decisive role in triggering some specific
metaphorical expressions over others. According to Taylor and Kidgell (2021),
the acquisition of a historical dimension might give the opportunity to
decontextualise the current discourse on the coronavirus and to distance
ourselves from the data. The historical investigation of metaphors may
complement cognitive insights and allow us to understand metaphors in more
depth. Three research questions are thus addressed:
 How are the Spanish Flu and Coronavirus metaphorically represented?
 Which metaphors are present in both contexts, and which metaphors are
unique to one context?
 To what extent may socio-historical-cultural conditions affect the
actualisation of a metaphor?
In order to realise the overarching research aims, I conducted a case study
focused on two US newspapers, the decision of which is based on two factors:
firstly, according to Crosby (2003), the Spanish Flu might have originated in the
US, and secondly the US has registered the highest number of Coronavirus
infection cases, at the time of writing.
2. Social and Metaphorical representation
This work has been particularly influenced by two theoretical frameworks. The
first one is the social representation theory, which explores the cultural, social
and linguistic mechanisms whereby knowledge is collectively developed and
acquired (Goffman 1969; Moscovici 1988). According to Jaspal and Nerlich, “a
social representation consists of a network of ideas, values and practices in
relation to a specific object” (2020: 4) – in this case Spanish Flu and the
Coronavirus. “The key to its method of production lies in the anchoring and
objectivation processes” (Moscovici 1988: 244). Anchoring refers to the process
of changing something from unfamiliar to comprehensible by ‘securing’ it to
something we already know about. Objectification refers to the process of
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transforming unfamiliar objects into concrete, common-sense realities. Social
representations enable individuals to understand and communicate about
unknown diseases through these two social psychological processes by means
of language and specifically using metaphors.
The second theoretical framework explores the critical metaphor analysis in
discourse from a cognitive perspective (Charteris-Black 2004; Musolff 2006;
Semino 2008), with two underlying presuppositions. The first presupposition is
that metaphors are considered as creators of meaning – cognitive and linguistic
tools that produce meaning and have done so ever since humans started to talk
(Lakoff/Johnson 1980); they are essential for the development of language,
cognition and culture (Gibbs 2002; Trim 2011). The second presupposition is
that metaphors have a fundamental framing function (Musolff 2006; Kövecses
2020) and play a vital role in influencing how we understand reality.
When we use a metaphor, we are speaking and thinking of one thing in relation
to another, with the metaphorical choice foregrounding certain aspects of
similarity between two entities and backgrounding other aspects (Semino 2008).
For example, the metaphorical mapping ARGUMENT IS A WAR foregrounds the
fact that an argument (target domain) is like a war (source domain) as there are
two factions confronting each other, whilst it backgrounds the fact that an
argument is not like a war as opponents are not enemies intending to kill each
other for survival. These foregrounding and backgrounding mechanisms pertaining
to a metaphorical phenomenon are evaluative processes through which
the speaker/writer and the hearer/reader assign negative or positive values on
the things interpreted; they influence how we act, collectively and as
individuals (Semino 2008). For example, as also discussed in Taylor (2021), the
use of WATER metaphors to describe the QUANTITY of migrants coming to a
nation might be interpreted positively (Salahshour 2016) or negatively
(Gabrielatos/Baker 2008).
According to Musolff’s work (2006), each metaphor evokes a specific interpretation
of a situation and, from a discursive perspective, may activate a
particular frame. The activation of a frame allows us to reason about the target
domain on the basis of what we know about the source domain. In particular,
the framing implications of metaphoric use have recently been studied from a
cognitive perspective (for an overview see Landau/Meir/Keefer 2010).
Thibodeau/Boroditsky (2011; 2013) and Thibodeau/Hendricks/Boroditsky
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(2017) for example have showed that exposure to even a single metaphor can
have an impact on people’s opinion on how to solve social problems, and the
use of certain metaphors foster structurally-consistent inferences induced by
frame-consistent knowledge structures. Their work shows that people can be
subconsciously influenced by metaphors when thinking about social policy
because specific conceptualisations of problems can be encouraged, which
could be either helpful or misleading for the aims of the metaphor user. Hart
(2018) also studies the effect of metaphorical uses on reasoning: readers of texts
where metaphors are used – in both language and image – favour adopting
solutions in line with the metaphorical framing evoked by the source domain.
In light of his findings, the use of specific metaphors to represent the pandemics
and viruses might play a decisive role in influencing people reaction in a
delicate situation such as a global pandemic; metaphors can covertly influence
how people think, and people are not always aware that they have been
influenced by a metaphor.
The implications of metaphorical use are thus important at a linguistic,
discursive, and social level. With regard to public communication about
pandemics, the importance of the construction of the actual discourses and of
social representation of pandemic diseases by political leaders and by
newspapers lies in the fact that during the pandemics, society is characterised
by an extreme sensitivity, living in a situation of great distress. The spread of
the virus is both a healthcare and social issue whereby a correct understanding
of the problem is crucial for the management of the pandemic. In such a
situation, the impact of public communication on individuals is great; the action
of the individual might be strongly influenced by the information gathered from
news media, social media, and politicians. Angeli states that “metaphors play a
crucial role in how pandemic flu is viewed by people worldwide and perhaps
how these people react to the flu, whether it is with fear, blame or acceptance”
(2012: 218).
3. Metaphorical representation of pandemics in the press
A large and growing body of literature has investigated the impact of metaphorical
use on talking, thinking, and acting in the context of emerging
infectious diseases and epidemics within news media discourses. In addition to
Susan Sontag’s seminal works on figurative language and illness (1978; 1989),
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in which she fundamentally argues that the way we choose to describe and
narrate a disease (cancer, tuberculosis and AIDS in her works) is a tool we use
to deal with its spread, its consequences, and as a means to limit its negative
effects, with many other infections having been studied following her approach,
such as Ebola in the 1990s (Ungar 1998; Joffe/Haarhoff 2002), mad cow disease
(Washer 2006), SARS (Washer 2004), avian/bird flu (Ungar 2008; Brown et al.
2009), Zika (Ribeiro et al. 2018).
The generalisability of much published research on this issue is problematic,
however previous research findings into the metaphorical representation of
illnesses have consistently shown that pandemics are framed in newspaper
discourse by generally giving a negative presentation of the disease. The
emergence or resurgence of different diseases – epidemic or pandemic – are
discursively represented by newspapers in terms of negatively polarised
frames: newspapers, interpreted as repository of society’s opinion (Schudson
1996), naturally feel antagonistic towards the virus as it hinders and obstructs
the everyday social conduct. Infectious diseases are interpreted as a threat to
public health and the economy in an increasingly globalised world as these
would easily and rapidly affect the work of transnational, national and local
government actors (Dingwall et al. 2013).
For example, the WAR frame is aptly used in relation to the discourse of
epidemics and pandemics as the military rhetoric perfectly allows the user to
demonstrate control over something that evades such control. According to
Semino (2021: 51), military metaphors are particularly used for talking and
thinking about illnesses and pandemic, because illness represents a kind of less
tangible problem (like debt or grief), within ‘problem’ frame, where one of the
ways through which we deal with these issues is a concrete action of opposition
like conflict: “aggressive military powers and invaders are the most extreme
examples of opponents, and wars are the most extreme examples of dealing
with them” (Semino 2021: 51). Different studies show this frequent association
and suggest that there is a kind of conventional metaphorical pattern. For
example, Wallis and Nerlich (2005) investigate the representation of the 2003
SARS epidemic in UK media and identify that the media tend to refer to SARS
disease in terms of two related conceptual frames. On the one hand, the disease
is represented through the KILLER frame: the nature of SARS, its local and
human impact, and individual responses were discussed in terms of the warDel
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related KILLER frame – DISEASE IS A KILLER. On the other hand, the responses
elicited by the SARS were largely framed through a bureaucratic discourse of
CONTROL and “a balance metaphor-dyad of controlled/uncontrolled” (Wallis/
Nerlich 2005: 2637). Similarly, Koteyko et al. (2008) investigate the Avian Flu in
UK media between 2005 and 2006. They identify three major metaphor frames
that structured the media coverage of avian flu in various ways: the INVASION
frame, the WAR frame, and the HOUSE frame. They argue that “further along the
“path” a virus travels and the closer it gets to its “goal,” the more “war”
metaphors one might find in the media coverage” (2008: 257). This work also
reveals that metaphorical mappings are strongly dependent on the
speaker/writer perspective on the topic discussed, accordingly with Taylor
(2021: 8). Depending on whether the health crisis is seen as a national, foreign
or global, there is a difference in metaphorical framing and the framing of
disease management options (Koteyko et al. 2008: 257); once Avian Flu reached
the United Kingdom – the HOUSE, the WAR and INVASION frame were triggered
and activated, whilst before the virus reached the nation to which the
speakers/writers belong, the PATH frame was predominant throughout the
narrative. Nerlich and Halliday (2007) study the media representation of Avian
Flu in UK media and find that the most predominant source domain mapped
onto disease’s domain corresponds to the DISASTER metaphor; expressions like
‘epicentre’ and ‘impact’ of the virus, or the reference to the number of cases as
‘flood’ evoke the natural disaster over which, arguably, neither scientists nor
politicians have control. Similarly, Angeli (2012) examines press articles to
understand better the metaphors surrounding H1N1 and Swine Flu. She
identifies the presence of different mappings that coherently designate the
rhetoric of a pandemic: WAR metaphors and DISASTER metaphor. Dobrić and
Weder (2016) found the presence of the mapping VIRUS IS A NATURAL/
ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER in their analysis of the conceptualisation of illness in
a data set composed of English medical journals and newspaper texts published
between 1990 and 2010. In line with the literature, they also identify that illness
is consistently represented by the evoked images of ‘murder’, ‘fugitive’, ‘enemy’
and ‘liquid’, in relation to the metaphor of natural disaster. Interestingly, they
found a consistency in metaphorical framing between medical journals and
newspapers: they argue that medical professionals are the original source of the
flu imagery media report to the general public (2016: 132–133).
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With respect to the Spanish Flu, there is a relatively small body of literature
concerning media and metaphorical representations of the Spanish Flu or H1N1
in the press. There are some historical studies that are more focused on the
sociological and cultural aspect of the issue rather than the linguistic and
metaphorical representation in the press (e.g. Crosby 2003; Kupperberg 2008;
Snowden 2019). One reason for its underrepresentation might be due to the fact
that the Spanish Flu, as discussed in the introduction, is often remembered as a
forgotten pandemic – having occurred during WWI – and thus not highly
publicised by health officials, the government and newspapers so as not to panic
people (Angeli 2012: 210). In this sense, research has predominantly been
focused on investigating the reasons for its being overshadowed.
For example, Hume (2000) draws on a corpus of 58 articles to find the reasons
for the Spanish Flu being removed from Americans’ memory and media
coverage of the epidemic. Interestingly, she argues that
the nature of epidemic itself offers clues to why it has been virtually
‘forgotten’. It had no beginning or end, no definable enemies, no
amplified heroes who fit an early twentieth-century male definition
of the concept, and no institutionalized commemoration (Hume 2000:
910).
Her findings reveal some issues in relation to the actual project: the presumed
underrepresentation of this disease might have played a decisive role in
influencing its resulting presence within the press. As will be discussed later, it
seems that it did not too heavily affect the presence of metaphorical mapping.
Regarding the study of figurative language of the Spanish Flu, Honigsbaum
(2013) conducts a study on how the regulation of emotional responses to the
pandemic were governed by political and medical discourses. He studies how
the political propaganda and medical discourses promoted the cultivation of
stoicism over other emotions in the press to stifle the dissent and to maintain
people’s morale during the war by using a rhetoric style full of metaphors and
stressing on the concept of stoic resistance. In my opinion, Honigsbaum’s work
highlights an important aspect that should be taken into consideration when
studying metaphors. Even though national propaganda might influence
people’s perception by using well-designed rhetoric, there are other factors to
consider that might define the interpretation of language and specifically
metaphors: individual, cultural, social, political and also physiological. In this
work, he shows that sentiments of dread and disease among the population,
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due to the rise in the number of deaths, seriously challenged the credibility of
the wartime propaganda. When analysing and interpreting metaphors,
contextual aspects play an important role.
Regarding COVID-19, the growing number of studies that focus on analysing
the use of metaphorical language in relation to Coronavirus emphasise the
prominence of military rhetoric and specifically war metaphors. Semino (2021)
shows that the virus has been consistently described as a ‘tsunami’ on health
services, an ‘enemy’ to be beaten, and an ‘invader’ in the press. There are works
dedicated to the analysis of the presence of metaphors in relation to
Coronavirus that explore the adoption of this mapping. Similarly, Aqromi
(2020) and Wicke/Bolognesi (2020) find similar results respectively in an
Indonesian newspaper and in a Twitter corpus: the WAR mapping seems to be
preferable over other kinds of descriptions. In general, the current literature on
Covid seems to be more interested in investigating social and political
implications that might be evoked by such linguistic choices (cf. Chapman/
Miller 2020; Gillis 2020; Martinez-Brawley/Gualda 2020; Sabucedo et al.
2020). Sabucedo et al. argue that using the war metaphor is problematic as
although it evokes some positive imagery (resistance and heroism),
it also dredges up others which denote conflict, like confrontation,
obedience and enemy. Likewise, it is unclear why other frameworks
associated with care, empathy and solidarity are not being used in a
healthcare emergency (2020: 619).
Semino (2021), in line with initiatives, like the #reframecovid project, proposes
that fire metaphors are appropriate and versatile for discussing pandemics as
they are better for expressing the mechanisms of contagion (‘virus’ as ‘fire’), and
the measures which can be taken into consideration (‘health workers’ as
‘firefighters’).
Three important themes emerge from the studies discussed so far. Firstly, the
prominence of conflictual metaphors used to speak about pandemics. Secondly,
it seems that an emerging awareness of the implications in using military
metaphors is present in relation to Covid-19. Lastly, given the prominence of
war metaphors, it can be argued that less space has been devoted to the study
of the implications of the use of the other metaphorical mappings identified.
This work thus intends to outline all the metaphors that are used to represent
the Spanish Flu and Covid-19, then define to which extent the emergence of
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each metaphorical mapping is dependent on the socio-political and historical
context.
4. Methodology
4.1 Diachronic CADS and metaphor analysis
This work has been conducted through a critical, exploratory and comparative
perspective: a quantitative analysis has revealed firstly a list of plausible
metaphorical candidates, which have been subsequently analysed qualitatively
and corroborated by triangulating those results with other contextual linguistic
information gathered from freely available corpora. The methodology adopted
for this work is a combination of Corpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis,
henceforth CADS (as discussed in Baker 2006; Partington et al. 2013;
Taylor/Marchi 2018), with the tradition of Critical Metaphor Analysis (as
discussed in Charteris-Black 2004; Charteris-Black 2017) – more specifically a
corpus-driven, bottom-up and context-dependent approach to critical linguistic
and conceptual metaphor analysis within discourse (Patterson 2018: 34). Within
CADS tradition, many studies have focused on the analysis of metaphors in
texts and discourse by using the methods of corpus linguistics (e.g. Deignan
2005; Semino et al. 2018; Taylor 2021). Considering that metaphors are manifest
in language as subconscious associations between words (Semino 2008), and
that linguistic use (also metaphorical use) is established within discourse as an
increasing accumulation of individual instances of use, Corpus Linguistics
provides firstly a large quantity of data that functions as empirical linguistic
evidence for the identification of metaphors, and secondly useful tools for
identifying patterns of metaphorical use which could not be seen by the ‘naked
eye’ (Partington et al. 2013). A diachronic approach (McEnery/Baker 2017) is
also adopted as attention is also given to a comparison of the two pandemics’
metaphorical representations between two different time periods. Unlike
McEnery/Baker (2017) and Taylor (2021), who both focus on the evolution of
linguistic and metaphorical use over a long stretch of time (respectively 17th
century and 19th and 20th century), this project explores two specific time
periods that have been selected and compared. Thus, the evolution of language
over time was not possible to discuss.
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4.2 Data Collection
The dataset consists of two broadsheet newspaper corpora that have been
specifically compiled for this work: Flu1920 and Covid2020. The former is
composed of articles published between January 1918 and December 1920,
when the Spanish Flu took place, and gathered from the archive Chronicling
America, which is freely available on the web. The latter is composed of articles
from The New York Times covering the period from December 2019 to January
2021, and gathered from the archive LexisNexis, made available through the
library of University of Padova. The corpora have been compiled specifically
for the purpose of this research. On the basis of existing literature on the history
of pandemics (Crosby 2003; Snowden 2019), two sets of search terms have been
used in order to retrieve only the text which supposedly contained the
information needed:
 ‘Spanish Flu’, ‘Influenza’, ‘Flu Pandemic/s’, ‘Pandemic’, ‘Epidemic’ for
Flu1920 corpus;
 ‘Corona Virus’, ‘Coronavirus’, ‘Covid’, ‘Covid-19’ for Covid2020 corpus.
The following Table 1 summarises the information about the compiled corpora.
It was not possible to indicate the number of texts as the downloading modality
for each archive was different: for Flu1920, the retrieved file contained all the
articles published daily, whilst for Covid2020 the downloaded files contained
only one document. Interestingly, the two corpora show a notable difference in
terms of the number of tokens present. This can be explained by the fact that in
the past fewer texts were published than are today, however this has not
affected this work as we did not produce a quantitative comparison. Even more
interesting is how the data reveals a strong difference between the two datasets
in the TTR, or the ratio between the number of types and tokens, which is used
to indicate the lexical richness and complexity of a text. In this case, this result
is strongly affected by the OCR (optical character recognition) software through
which these documents have been digitally converted that, as shown by
different studies (e.g. Joulain-Jay 2017; Del Fante/Di Nunzio 2021a; 2021b),
might play a decisive role in the correctness of the resulting documents. In this
sense, considering that the actual work mainly consisted of a qualitative
analysis partially assisted by a quantitative approach, this did not heavily affect
the research.
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Tokens Types TTR STTR
Flu1920 1.790.597 124.781 6,97 50,79%
Covid2020 20.520.628 129.200 0,63% 47,21%
Table 1: Corpora details
4.3 Metaphor Identification process
One of the main challenges of this work was the identification and retrieval of
metaphor occurrences. Considering that I was focused on how the use of
metaphors for describing pandemics might impact the ideal reader of
newspaper articles, I was interested in frequent metaphorical expressions. I thus
decided to identify metaphor candidates through collocates.
Collocations are useful means for metaphorical identification because
frequent collocates often signal an incongruity or tension between a
word and its surrounding context (Deignan 2005 cited in Berber
Sardinha 2006: 252).
Following Taylor (2021), collocates are understood words that have a strong
connection with a node (for instance pandemic and fight) and the strength is
represented by a statistically salient value. “By identifying lexical items which
occur as collocates, we can assume that there is a degree of conventionalisation
indicating that the metaphor was indeed part of the discourse” (Taylor 2021: 6).
Thus, adapted from Steen et al. (2010: 25–26) and Taylor (2021: 6), the steps
throughout the identification process can be summarised as follows.
A. Definition of a list of nodes (belonging to the target domain) to be searched
for each corpus - ‘Spanish Flu’, ‘Influenza Pandemic’, ‘Flu Pandemic/s’,
‘Pandemic’, ‘Epidemic’, ‘Influenza’ for Flu Corpus and ‘Corona Virus’,
‘Coronavirus’, ‘Covid’, ‘Covid-19’ for Covid Corpus. I also decided to include
‘influenza’ in the search and to gather all the occurrences when ‘Spanish Flu’
was mentioned as influenza. According to Taylor/Kidgell (2021), the name
whereby a disease is generally known does not necessarily correspond to
the actual name whereby it was originally mentioned.
B. Analyse the context for each of the nodes in the list by calculating
collocations within the corpus by using the WordSmith tools software (Scott
2020).
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C. For each node, log-likelihood statistical measure and a five-word left/right
span were used.
D. Select all the collocates that can be plausible candidates for metaphors on
the basis of intuition, and triangulate those results with data from previous
research, contemporary and historical thesauruses and reading sample
concordance lines.
E. Categorisation of each linguistic metaphor, assigning it under the corresponding
source conceptual frame.
F. Calculate for each source frame the number of lexicalisations, namely the
number of linguistic metaphors assigned to it. Related words like ‘to
confine’ and ‘confinement’ have been counted as one lexicalisation.
5. Discussion
This section presents the results of the analysis of metaphors in Flu Corpus and
Corona Corpus. For each corpus, I categorised all the metaphors in terms of the
source frame on which the target frame illness is mapped. All the metaphors have
been interpreted after giving a close reading to the context for each example,
and I collected all the metaphors for the Flu Corpus and for the Corona Corpus
and then compared the metaphors found. Following Taylor’s discussion (2021:
6–7) on the relationship between the number of lexicalisations per source frame
and the metaphoricity of a mapping, I determined that there should be at least
two lexicalisations (e.g. attack, and scourge for WAR frame) per source frame
that could signal a high degree of metaphor ‘animacy’. Speaking
metaphorically, the number of lexicalisations may indicate that the source frame
is ‘fertile’ in terms of the number of metaphors produced, whilst a low number
of lexicalisations (less than two) may indicate that a metaphorical expression is
at “the end of its ‘life cycle’ (Croft/Cruse 2004) and was now bleached or
fossilised” (Taylor 2021: 7). In this work, I limited my analysis to only active
metaphors. I also found what Reisigl and Wodak defines as personification to be
particularly useful for the analysis:
[…] specific forms of metaphors that bring together and link two
different semantic fields, one with the semantic feature [– human], the
other bearing the semantic feature [+ human]. Personifications or
anthropomorphisations are rhetorically used to give a human for or
to humanise inanimate objects, abstract entities, phenomena and
ideas (Reisigl/Wodak 2001: 58).
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5.1 Metaphor of Spanish Flu
Regarding ‘Spanish Flu’ in U.S. newspapers, I found that the discourse of
pandemics is consistently based on four main conceptual frames, as it is also
displayed in Figure 1 and Table 2:
 TRAVEL
 WAR
 CONTAINER
 FIRE
Fig. 1: Metaphors of Spanish Flu per number of lexicalisations
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Source
Frame No. of Lexicalisations
Transitivity
WAR 8 Doer
TRAVEL 5 Doer
FIRE 2 Doer
CONTAINER 3 Done-to
Table 2: Source frames and number of lexicalisations
The WAR frame and the TRAVEL frame are the principal conceptual frames
through which illness is represented. These frames also present a rich lexical
variety in relation to the pandemic discourse in the Flu Corpus. The WAR frame
presents eight lexicalisations, and the TRAVEL frame has 5 lexicalisations. The
FIRE and the CONTAINER frame then show four lexicalisations each, with the
living entity and water frames registering three and two lexicalisations
respectively. The WAR and CONTAINER frames are used to represent and describe
the virus as something to be solved, whilst the other frames just highlight the
danger of the presence of this ‘enemy’.
In general, the metaphorical representation of Spanish Flu is structured between
two levels. The four metaphors mentioned above correspond to a level of
representation that activates a wider NATION frame. The nation, which might
indicate a community, a city or the entire nation, is opposed to the virus, whose
activity is specifically represented by means of these metaphorical frames: a
traveller or an enemy [+human] whether a fire [-human] which dangerously
threatens the stability of the nation. Moreover, whilst the FIRE and WAR frames
describe the virus and pandemic in negative and dramatic terms, the TRAVEL
frame does not explicitly give a negative representation of the virus, although it
decisively contributes to the personification process necessary for developing a
military rhetoric and constructing the virus as a real enemy. In the following
subsections I will briefly discuss each frame by reporting some relevant
examples.
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5.1.1 WAR in the Flu Corpus
The data shows that the WAR frame is the most present metaphor in the Flu
Corpus. This frame is also linked to the ENEMY frame: the Spanish Flu is an
invading enemy and its management becomes a war. The military rhetoric is
particularly present in relation to the Spanish Flu. The following Table 3 shows
eight lexicalisations with the indication of the relative frequency as collocates of
“Spanish Flu”.
Lexicalisations Rel Freq. (pmw) Distribution within WAR
frame
Attack (of) 29,04 44,07 %
Combating 15,64 23,73 %
Fight 6,70 10,17 %
Scourge 4,47 6,78 %
Attacked (by) 3,91 5,93 %
Fighting 3,35 5,08 %
Invasion 2,79 4,24 %
Enemy 1,68 2,54 %
Strike 1,68 2,54 %
Explosive 0,56 0,85 %
Table 3: Lexicalisation of the WAR frame for ‘Spanish Flu’
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The lexicalisations ‘attack of’, ‘attacked by’ and ‘invasion’, ‘combating’ and
‘fight’ are in particular frequently used in relation to this frame, whilst ‘attack
of’, ‘attacked by’ and ‘invasion’ are used to describe the presence or arrival of
the virus in a community/place, as in the following examples (1) and (2),
‘combating’ and ‘fight’ are used to speak and think about how to deal with the
virus, as in (3), (4) and (5).
Influenza's latest phase. How the Recent Epidemic Differed from
the 1918 Attack. As far as present indications show the influenza,
that has prevailed during the last few months was very different
in age distribution of fatal cases from that of the 1918-1919
invasion. In the world pandemic of 1918 the deaths were largely
concentrated between the ages of 20 and 40 (The Brattleboro daily
reformer – 28/04/1920).
The theory that the strange epidemic of influenza attacked only
those who were run down because of lack of proper food was
exploded in late August when, a dispatch from an Irish port told
of occurrences of symptoms of this disease among officers and
men stationed at an American destroyer base (Evening Times –
Republican – 30/09/1918).
How To Fight Spanish Influenza. An old enemy is with us again,
although under a new name, say various editorial observers in
noting the epidemic of Spanish influenza and recalling at the
same time the "grippe" that was new a generation ago (Cayton’
Weekly - 12/10/1918).
To combat the epidemic and to relieve the suffering is the aim of
the relief committee. Report after report which reached the
committee last night told of whole families stricken by the
malady (The Barre Daily Times - 01/10/1918).
Interestingly, looking at (1), by making a specific reference to the pandemic as
the 1918-1919 invasion, the writer seems to assume that the disease’s
appearances are counted in a series – akin to the characteristics of a war, which
typically constitutes a series of battles. Moreover, looking at the following
example (5), the comparison between the ‘war’ and the pandemic is even
clearer: the message in the newspaper suggests fighting the enemy – being the
virus – to help the World War I effort.
Norwich may not be attacked by this Spanish Influenza. If it is
you, each one of you can help fight this vital sapping disease and
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thus restore our full forces quickly to aid in war activities
(Norwich Bullettin – 18/09/1918).
Lastly, looking at the following examples (6), which are both extracted from a
text that informs readers of the measures to be taken so as not to be affected by
the virus, the virus is explicitly compared to an armed enemy, with
management by the government being described as a ‘crusade’ – namely,
according to Oxford English Dictionary, “a military expedition undertaken by
the Christians of Europe in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries to recover the Holy
Land from the Muslims”. Moreover, the metaphor alludes to the human body
as the battlefield, specifically the stomach, with the diet becoming a defence.1
National Health Officials, in Crusade Against Possible
Recurrence of Epidemic, Point Out That the Germ Still Lurks in
Our Midst and Urge Every Precaution. […] His citadel, when
germs attack, is his stomach. In that arsenal and fortification he
keeps his arms and ammunition. Also his troops. From that
centre his host goes forth to battle and to die or conquer. Diet,
then, is secondary to no other measure of defence against
Influenza (The Sun – 26/10/1919).
In relation to the agency analysis, the use of military metaphors depicts the virus
as a doer, assigning to it the [+human] semantic feature: this metaphor defines a
clear discursively image – the virus is a real enemy who requires immediate
actions to be defeated. The use of this metaphor might activate different
reactions and aspects related to the WAR frame in the readership, such as
aggressiveness, tension, agitation, and justifies also extreme actions, the hunt
for a pest.
5.1.2 TRAVEL in the Flu Corpus
The TRAVEL frame is the second most present in the Flu Corpus. The analysis
shows that the travel frame is prominent within the Spanish Flu discourse,
expressed by the five lexicalisations collected in Table 4.
1 This resonates with what Honigsbaum (2013) argues about the Bovril’s meat extract, which
was associated with ‘strength’ or ‘vital strength’ in newspapers, and was used to influence
emotions among the readership during the 1918 pandemic.
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Lexicalisations Rel freq. (pmw) Distribution within
TRAVEL frame
Visit 6,70 31,58%
Come 6,14 28,95%
Reach 3,35 15,79%
Leave 3,35 15,79%
Appear 1,68 7,89%
Table 4: Lexicalisation of the TRAVEL frame for ‘Spanish Flu’
Present indications are that within a few weeks, and possibly a
few days, Vermont will be visited by an epidemic of the so-called
Spanish influenza (The Barbie Daily Times – 24/09/1918).
Spanish Influenza Discovered in Six U. S. Seaport Towns
Surgeon General Blue Admits European Pandemic has reached
America (The New York Tribune – 14/09/1918).
If people will only take this cheap precaution at the beginning of
colds, this Influenza would soon leave the town (El Paso Herald –
05/10/1918).
The use of this metaphor is based on the comparison between the movement of
the virus and the movement of a person – a traveller. In this sense, the virus is
described as a person who moves from one place to another: ‘visit’ somewhere,
‘come’ to someone’s place, ‘reach’ a place or ‘leave’ a place and ‘appear’
somewhere, as in examples (7), (8) and (9). The virus is personified and
described by means of [+human] semantic features – it is an actual traveller. In
this case, contrary to the war frame, the aggressive, belligerent connotations
defined are absent.
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5.1.3 CONTAINER in the Flu Corpus
The CONTAINER frame has been identified among three lexicalisations, as Table
5 shows. The lexicalisations identified can be distinguished into two types: on
the one hand the metaphors that foreground the rupture of the container like
‘outbreak’ and ‘break’, as in (10), and on the other hand the metaphors that
foreground the need to reassemble or prevent the rupture of the container, like
‘control’ and ‘check’, as in (11). (12) shows the co-occurrence of both these
metaphors.
Lexicalisations Rel freq. (pmw) Distribution within
CONTAINER frame
outbreak/s 1,56 71,8
Break out 0,28 12,8
Check 0,67 30,8
control/ed 0,50 23,1
Table 5: Lexicalisation of the CONTAINER frame for ‘Spanish Flu’
Members of the Douglas County Medical association, at a
meeting held Tuesday night, decided that the city health
department should not relax its vigilance in the suppression of
the Spanish "flu" outbreak, and they advised that the closing
order should prevail until convincing evidence of an
improvement in the situation is offered (Omaha Daily Bee –
18/09/1918).
Health departments cannot control influenza. The people must
be educated to protect themselves. It is up to the individual (The
Daily Morning Oasis - 02/10/1919).
[…] The application of new principles of hygiene and protection,
outbreaks of influenza may be controlled (The Fargo Forum and
Daily Republican – 12/12/1918).
According with Taylor/Kidgell (2021), these metaphors could be understood as
a personification of the virus: this strategy effects in coherently triggering two
links with two other frames. On the one hand, the virus is interpreted as a
fugitive criminal, which can be also related to the war frame, where the virus is
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an enemy. On the other hand, the container frame could also be linked to the
visitor2 metaphor, where the virus unpleasantly visits the country by breaking
the borders of the container/nation.
5.1.4 FIRE in the Flu Corpus
The fire frame is the least active metaphor identified within the Flu Corpus. It is
expressed by means of two lexicalisations, as Table 6 shows: ‘raging’, ‘raged’
and ‘flame’. Looking at the following examples (13) and (14), this frame
decisively contributes to the creation of a dangerous, negative discursive image
of the virus, as well as the pandemic in general. By metaphorically representing
the Spanish Flu as fire, the corresponding frame is activated, with ‘raged’ and
‘raging’ in particular constituting 88% of metaphors within the fire frame.
FIRE Rel freq.
(pmw)
Distribution
within FIRE
frame
raged/ing 12,29 88 %
Flame 1,68 12 %
Table 6: Lexicalisation of the FIRE frame for ‘Spanish Flu’
Thus the beginning of the last pandemic in Europe and the
United States has been traced to sporadic cases appearing In
April, May and June, possibly even earlier in certain places,
while the destructive epidemic raged during September, October
and November of 1918 (Greenwood daily commonwealth –
30/04/1920).
As to speak of the pandemic flame that, within a period of
eighteen months, has scorched all the people of the world
whether of Christian faith, heathen faith or no faith at all (The
Holt County Sentinel – 24/06/1920).
2 I want to thank the anonymous reviewer who suggested to reflect on this aspect.
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Contrary to the other framings analysed, this is the only one not involved in a
personification process: the [+human] semantic feature does not characterise
this semantic frame, which can be interpreted as related to the frame of natural
disaster.
5.2 Metaphor of Coronavirus
With regard to Coronavirus, I found the language used within the Corona Corpus
to be highly metaphorical: the pandemic has been consistently represented
through the use of metaphors. I identified in particular five conceptual source
frames mapped onto the illness target domain, as displayed in Figure 2 and
Table 7:
 WAR
 CONTAINER
 WATER
 TRAVEL
 FIRE
Fig. 2: Metaphors of Coronavirus per number of lexicalisations
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Source Frame No. of Lexicalisations
WAR 21
CONTAINER 6
WATER 6
TRAVEL 4
FIRE 4
Table 7: Source frames and number of lexicalisations Coronavirus
What is most notable in Table 7 is the number of lexicalisations of the war frame
as it registers the highest number. This is in line with the trends identified
within the literature, however the number of lexicalisations far exceeds the
average results registered for the other frames, with the container and water
frames also registering high numbers of lexicalisations. By also comparing these
results with what has been discussed in relation to Spanish Flu, the discourse of
Coronavirus can be considered as particularly rich in terms of the number of
metaphors contained. The TRAVEL frame, the FIRE frame and the WEIGHT frame,
which register the lowest numbers of lexicalisations in this analysis, distinctly
demonstrate metaphorical activity.
In general, the movement of the virus is interpreted through the WATER and FIRE
frames, which can be related to the DISASTER frame. The virus is personified as
an enemy or as a traveller, both in a war context. The metaphorical
representation of Covid is particularly characterised by military rhetoric, given
that the war frame is expressed with 21 different lexicalisations. In line with the
works of Semino (2021) and Wicke/Bolognesi (2021), this analysis likewise
reveals the tendency of framing the management of the health crisis as a war. In
this sense, the entire discursive image is strongly affected by this metaphorical
use, and the other metaphors are – to some extent – dependent on the WAR
frame. In the following subsections, I will briefly discuss each frame, showing
the lexicalisations and presenting some relevant examples.
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5.2.1 WAR in the Corona Corpus
The data shows that the WAR frame is the primary metaphorical representation
of Coronavirus. Similar to the Spanish Flu, the use of this metaphor frames the
discourse of Covid as a war between the nation and a threatening enemy that
must be defeated to save the entire nation. The following Table 8 shows the 21
lexicalisations, indicating the relative frequency as collocates of “Coronavirus”.
This might prove that this type of mapping is considerably successful in relation
to illness discourse, given the number of different lexicalisations, and how
frequently they occur.
Lexicalisations Rel. Freq. (pmw)
Distribution within
WAR frame
Fight/ing 83,53 25,30%
Kill 55,70 16,87%
protect/ing/ed -
protection/s 46,68 14,14%
battle/ing/ed 33,77 10,23%
task force 33,14 10,04%
combat/ing 31,48 9,54%
War 11,45 3,47%
strike/ing 7,55 2,29%
Beat 5,95 1,80%
Defeat 4,39 1,33%
Enemy 3,41 1,03%
undermine/ed/ing 2,97 0,90%
tackle/ing/ed 2,92 0,89%
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Onslaught 1,80 0,55%
Scourge 1,41 0,43%
conquer/ed/ing 1,32 0,40%
Relentless 1,22 0,37%
attack/attacked/attacking
(over the virus) 4,63 0,23
Assault 0,78 0,24%
Terror 0,49 0,15%
Devil/devlish 0,15 0,04%
Curse 0,05 0,01%
Table 8: Lexicalisation of the WAR frame for ‘Covid’
The following Figures 3, 4 and 5 are concordance lines taken from the Corona
Corpus and show the pervasiveness of this mapping within newspaper
description of the pandemics: the war on Covid.
Fig. 3: WAR metaphors patterns
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Fig. 4: WAR metaphor patterns
Fig. 5: WAR metaphor patterns
Moreover, the war is also brought to a supernatural level, with Covid being
defined as a ‘devil’ or devilish’, and a ‘curse’, as examples (15) and (16) show.
There’s nothing like reaching the age of 100 to make a person
want to get a grip on life, to start looking for that elusive way
forward, especially when it comes during a pandemic propelled
by a devilish virus that is everywhere and nowhere (The New
York Times – 24/05/2020).
When patients need intensive care. Its allocation must be fair.
Coronavirus is a curse; Discrimination makes it worse (The New
York Times – 25/04/2020).
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5.2.2 CONTAINER in the Corona Corpus
The CONTAINER frame has been realised through seven lexicalisations, which
are contained in Table 9. As seen with Spanish Flu, two types of lexicalisations
can be observed: on the one hand the metaphors that foreground the rupture of
the CONTAINER like ‘outbreak’ and ‘break’, as in Figure 6, and on the other
hand metaphors that foreground the need to reassemble or prevent the rupture
of the CONTAINER, like ‘control’, ‘check’, ‘halt’, ‘confinement’ and
‘containment’ as in Figures 7 and 8.
Lexicalisations Rel.
Freq.
(pmw)
Distribution
within
CONTAINER
frame
Outbreak/s 262,22 61,0
Contain/ed/ing/ment/ments 78,12 18,2
control/ing/ed 54,92 12,8
halt/ed/ing 13,40 3,1
check/ing/ed 10,18 2,4
confine/ment 2,58 0,6
Table 9: Lexicalisation of the CONTAINER frame for ‘Coronavirus’
Fig. 6: CONTAINER metaphors patterns
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Fig. 7: CONTAINER metaphors patterns
Fig. 8: CONTAINER metaphors patterns
The container represents society, whose normality has been ‘broken’ by a virus
that should be put under ‘control’ as a necessity.
5.2.3 WATER in the Corona Corpus
I found that the water frame is realised through six lexicalisations. These metaphors
are mainly used to represent the movement of the virus, as well as its
arrival into society and anything related to it, such as patients or cases of infection,
as shown in the examples (17), (18) and (19) and in the figure 9 and 10.
Lexicalisations Rel. Freq.
(pmw)
Distribution
within WATER
frame
rise/ing 45,81 39,2
Surge 41,62 35,6
wave/s 28,56 24,4
Flow 0,73 0,6
ebb/ing/ed 0,63 0,5
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Upsurge 0,39 0,3
deluge/ed 0,63 0,5
Table 10: Lexicalisation of the WATER frame for ‘Covid’
Fig. 9: WATER metaphor patterns
Fig. 10: WATER metaphor patterns
What Mr. Uddin lacked, his family says, was adequate access to
dialysis, a common treatment for impaired kidney function that
was not available in sufficient quantities to deal with wave after
wave of Covid-19 patients arriving in ambulances at the
emergency rooms (The New York Times – 20/05/2020).
European officials said the list would be revised every two weeks
to reflect new realities around the world as nations see the virus
ebb and flow (The New York Times – 31/05/2020).
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Mr. de Blasio’s comments come as New York City’s 911 system
is overwhelmed, hospitals in the New York area are deluged
with new coronavirus cases and medical staff warn of shortages
of personal protective equipment (The New York Times –
28/05/2020).
This mapping highlights the fact that the infection occurs through unpredictable
movements – as those produced by liquid. As discussed in the literature review
section, the unpredictability of water/viruses corresponds with the difficulty of
being controlled, thus necessitating the use of container metaphors.
5.2.4 TRAVEL in the Corona Corpus
The travel frame is present within the Corona Corpus in the form of four lexicalisations
collected in Table 11. Like the water frame, this metaphor is used to
represent the movement and diffusion of the virus and to liken the movement
of the virus to that of a person; the travel frame is activated because the virus is
described as a person who moves from one place to another and ‘circulate’ or
‘appear’ somewhere, ‘reach’ someone’s place and ‘left’ a place, as examples (20)
and (21) show.
TRAVEL Freq. Rel.
Freq.
(pmw)
Distribution
circulate/s/ed/ing 250 12,18 30,4
appear/s 360 17,54 43,7
Reach 128 6,24 15,6
leave/s 85 4,14 10,3
Table 11: Lexicalisation of the TRAVEL frame for ‘Covid’
Companies and universities — and the groups that represent
them — say they are vulnerable to a wave of lawsuits if they
reopen while the coronavirus continues to circulate widely, and
they are pushing Congress for temporary legal protections they
say will help get the economy running again (The New York Times
- 13/06/2020).
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Schools across the country followed suit, taking similar measures
to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, which began to
appear in more college populations this weekend (The New York
Times – 14/07/2020).
This mapping also constitutes a kind of personification as, by representing
illness in terms of travel, the semantic feature [+human] is assigned to the virus.
5.2.5 FIRE in the Corona Corpus
The FIRE frame is expressed by means of four lexicalisations collected in Table
12. In addition to the war frame, the use of this frame contributes to the
production of a dangerous and negative discursive image of illness – the
pandemic being fire. Looking at examples (22), (23) and (24), the virus is
described in dramatic terms as unpredictable, and as a cause for concern (22),
fear (23), and its management as a struggle (24). Figure 11 below also shows the
diffusion of this type of mapping in the corpus.
FIRE Rel. Freq.
(pmw)
Distribution
rage/ing 7,55 53,4
explode/ed 4,04 28,6
Flare 1,32 9,3
Wildfire 1,22 8,6
Table 12: Lexicalisation of the FIRE frame for ‘Covid’.
There are concerns, however, that as people begin returning to work
in China, the virus could flare up again (The New York Times –
07/02/2020).
Fearing the spread of a virus that continues to rage in much of the
country, school districts have shut down classrooms and
standardized testing companies have cancelled numerous dates for
the ACT and the SAT (The New York Times – 23/07/2020).
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As Western nations struggle with the wildfire spread of the
coronavirus, Singapore’s strategy, of moving rapidly to track down
and test suspected cases, provides a model for keeping the epidemic
at bay, even if it can’t completely stamp out infections (The New York
Times – 21/04/2020).
Fig. 11: FIRE metaphor patterns
5.3 Coronavirus and Spanish Flu – metaphor of pandemics
The comparison between the metaphorical representation of Coronavirus and
of Spanish Flu has shown that both the Spanish Flu and Coronavirus are mainly
described by using four specific source frames: WAR, TRAVEL, CONTAINER AND
FIRE, with Coronavirus being additionally represented through water
metaphors. The results thus show that as the two share many common
characteristics, the US press has constructed the discourses of both of pandemics
in a considerably similar way. Looking at this work, the virus moves according
to two types of movement expressed by the other three different frames shared
between Coronavirus and the Spanish Flu. On the on hand, the virus’ unknown
nature is made comprehensible by the use of travel metaphors which anchor it
to the image of the traveller – the virus moves as a traveller. On the other hand,
the virus unfamiliar nature is transformed into concrete common-sense reality
by the use of WATER and FIRE metaphors which objectify it as water and fire –
the virus movements are interpreted as those of fire and water, namely
dangerous and unpredictable. The use of container metaphors is more focused
on the description of the consequences of the virus on society: its arrival is seen
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as the rupture of a container, the upheaval of our daily routine. In addition to
these frames, the pervasive presence of war metaphors, which are the most used
in terms of lexicalisations and number of occurrences, decisively contribute to
the definition of a specific social representation: the virus is an enemy which
dangerously proceeds towards the nation as a traveller, which during a war is
likely to be interpreted as an enemy or an invader, and its arrival is compared
to the break a container because it is dangerous as an uncontrolled amount
water or as fire.
6. Conclusions
The aim of this paper has been to examine the metaphors used within the
discourse of pandemics. I was specifically interested in discovering which
source frames are used to talk about pandemics so as to define the extent to
which socio-political and historical contexts might affect the actualisation of
metaphors. In this sense, the study has identified that the Spanish Flu and the
Coronavirus have been metaphorically represented in a similar way. This
similarity that I have identified therefore might assist in the understanding of
the role of the context in triggering specific metaphorical representations: it
seems that the object of representation has played a significant role in
determining specific metaphorical mapping. The results of this paper suggest
that the existence of rhetoric of pandemic goes beyond the specific socio-cultural
and political context and it might be theorized the existence of ‘natural’
response pandemic which is deeply related with human nature.
According to Nerlich/Halliday (2007: 62), newspapers, as well as various
government officials are crucial participants in the production of awareness.
The media can amplify the message that the scientists want to convey. This
emergent rhetoric of fear in an atmosphere of uncertainty has consequences for
the relation between science and society, the public understanding of science
and for the policy-making process. The representation of the virus as an enemy
might be useful in the first phase of the emergency, but not at later stages.
Several questions still remain to be answered. A natural progression of this
work would be to analyse different socio-cultural and political context or to
compare different linguistic contexts. Otherwise, the study should be repeated
using bigger datasets or less corrupted. In fact, even though the quality of the
OCR scan used is high, there still is the possibility that the OCR related errors
metaphorik.de 32/2022
178
of Flu Corpus might have slightly affected the quality of the text and the number
of metaphors which have been retrieved. Therefore, an additional postprocessing
error correction process (Del Fante/Di Nunzio 2021a; 2021b) to
enhance the readability of the text composing the Flu Corpus is welcomed.
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8. Corpus
 Excerpt 1 – “This is like a war view from Italy’s coronavirus frontline”:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/this-is-like-a-warview-
from-italys-coronavirus-frontline
 Excerpt 2 – “On the frontline against Covid-19 in Ethiopia”:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/07/on-the-frontlineagainst-
covid-19-in-ethiopia-a-photo-essay
 Excerpt 3 “Coronavirus, al fronte di Rogoredo: diario di un medico di base
che visita dietro un vetro”:
https://espresso.repubblica.it/attualita/2020/03/30/news/coronavirusmedici-
di-famiglia-1.346360
 Excerpt 4 “How Flu Shots Can Help in the Fight Against Covid-19”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/well/live/how-flu-shots-canhelp-
in-the-fight-against-covid-19.html
 Corpus 1 – Flu1920
All the texts for the Flu1920 corpus have been gathered from the free-access
archive Chronicling America. A list of all digitized newspapers can be found here:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/.
List of newspapers used for the present study:
 The Brattleboro daily reformer – 28/04/1920
 Evening Times – Republican – 30/09/1918
 Cayton’ Weekly - 12/10/1918
 The Barre Daily Times - 01/10/1918
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 Norwich Bullettin – 18/09/1918
 The Sun – 26/10/1919
 The Barbie Daily Times – 24/09/1918
 El Paso Herald – 05/10/1918)
 Omaha Daily Bee – 18/09/1918)
 The Daily Morning Oasis - 02/10/1919
 The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican – 12/12/1918
 Greenwood daily commonwealth – 30/04/1920
 The Holt County Sentinel – 24/06/1920
 Corpus 2 – Covid2020
All the texts for the Covid2020 corpus have been gathered from the archive
LexisNexis, made available through the library of the University of Padova:
https://advance.lexis.com.