The Metaphorical Modeling of COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis in Infosphere Online News Articles

Abstract

        The article addresses the process of metaphorical modeling of Coronavirus (COVID-19) during COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis (CPC) by  Infosphere Online News (INFON) articles and stories. It is a cognitive semantic analysis of the language of online news based on the theoretical constructs proposed by Lakoff & Johnson (1987) Conceptual Metapor Theory. INFON articles embody a process of transferring verbalized knowledge between two active parties (News Authorship and Readership) with unequal knwoeldge accessibility and propensity to transfer and disseminate such knowledge. The mechanism of metaphorization is one of the key ways of verbalizing how the austhorship categorizes and conceptualizes the experience of the world with COVID-19. The results unfold: the predominant  COVID-19 perception in INFON discourse is “COVID-19  is an ENEMY” and the metaphorical modeling, utilized by INFON discourse, a two-edged tool: positive by objectively informing the readers about that world or negative, by manipulating their conceptualization to create an aggressive image of world, theorefore  circulating anxiety, fear and panic.