COVID-19: WAR OF METAPHORS THE COVERAGE OF NOVEL CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC IN GEORGIAN NEWS REPORTS

Authors

  • Nazi Iritspukhova

Keywords:

COVID-19, novel coronavirus, metaphors, metaphor scenarios, disease, discourse metaphors, news reports

Abstract

The paper uses the concepts of metaphor scenarios (Musolff, 2006; 2016) and discourse metaphors (Zinken et al, 2008) to analyze media discourses, specifically those of news reports, about COVID-19 (Novel coronavirus) situation in Georgia. The time span runs from the first confirmed case of COVID19 in Georgia, i.e. February 26th, till mid-May. The methodology also relies on earlier studies of infections and other diseases such as SARS, avian/bird flu, ZIKA, Foot and Mouth Disease, AID/HIV, cancer, etc. For identifying metaphorical linguistic expressions, the combination of Metaphor Identification Procedure /MIP (Pragglejaz Group, 2007) and its extended version, MIPVU (Steen et al., 2010) was employed. The revealed metaphors demonstrate that the pandemic in Georgia is mostly framed in terms of the WARFARE, JOURNEY and DISASTER super-scenarios, in Nerlich’s terms (Nerlich, 2011). In addition, the data show that the novel coronavirus may itself serve as a good source domain (Lakoff & Johnson, 198/2003; Grady, 1997, Kövecses, 2002; 2010) for political and societal issues: failures of the globalization, fear of foreigners and the future parliamentary election system in Georgia.

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Author Biography

Nazi Iritspukhova

I am a PhD student at Tbilisi State University researching metaphor in context. I have been teaching English since 2013 and have an extensive experience of teaching English to multi-level and exam-oriented classrooms. Currently I work as an ESL teacher in British Council Georgia. I hold CELTA (Certificate in English Language to Adults) and TYLEC (Teaching Young Learners Extension Certificate, provided by Trinity College London).

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Published

2020-06-24

How to Cite

Iritspukhova, N. (2020). COVID-19: WAR OF METAPHORS THE COVERAGE OF NOVEL CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC IN GEORGIAN NEWS REPORTS. Online Journal of Humanities ETAGTSU, (5), pages 21. Retrieved from https://etagtsu.tsu.ge/index.php/journal/article/view/28

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