Metaphors of Coronavirus: Invisible Enemy or Zombie Apocalypse?

"In this timely, wide-ranging and inspiring book, Jonathan Charteris-Black provides detailed and critical insights into the key roles played by metaphor and metonymy in framing the debate around the Covid-19 pandemic. He shows how, through their strong appeal to emotion, metaphors and metonyms form part of an 'overt moral coercion' which reduces the agency of those living through the pandemic. This book deepens our understanding of the ways in which the use of metaphor and metonymy can be used to shape behaviour, providing important insights into the collective experience of the pandemic. The chapter on metonymy is particularly illuminating as it highlights the different ways in which thought and behaviour during the Pandemic have been influenced by this highly subtle and nuanced form of communication which has been employed both in verbal format and through the use of images."
-Jeannette Littlemore, Professor of English Language and Applied Linguistics, University of Birmingham, UK

"This is a highly engaging, personal and lucid analysis of the figurative language used in the COVID-19 pandemic to 'make sense' of its threat to society and of the chances to counter it. Using both corpus-based and experimental survey methods, Charteris-Black expertly analyses key metaphors, metonymies and allegories about the virus, its worldwide spread and its medical management and relates them to fundamental parameters of moral judgement, leading to fascinating new insights."
-Andreas Musolff, Professor of Intercultural Communication, University of East Anglia, UK

This book explores the metaphors used in public and media communication to ask how language shapes our moral reasoning about the global coronavirus crisis. The author offers insights into the metaphors, metonyms, allegories and symbols of the global crisis and examines how they have contributed to policy formation and communication. Combining metaphor theory with moral foundations theory, he places metaphors in their historical contexts, and then critically questions why certain tropes might be used in particular situations to persuade and convince an audience. The book takes an integrated approach, involving ideas from cognitive linguistics, history, social psychology and literature to produce a multi-layered and thematically rich interpretation of the language of the pandemic and its social and political consequences. It will be relevant to readers with a background in these areas, as well as anyone with a general interest in the language used to make sense of this global event.
Jonathan Charteris-Black is Professor of Linguistics at the University of the West of England, UK. His research interests include metaphor, rhetoric and political discourse.


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