A Comparative Study Of War Metaphors In Chinese And American COVID-19 Reports

War metaphor is widely accepted as a common language phenomenon across different cultures,and has long been noticed by linguistics such as Lakoff and Johnson in their conceptual metaphor theory research.After broke out in Wuhan,China,the novel coronavirus pandemic has currently became a worldwide health crisis.News reports about the pandemic show a great tendency in using large amount of war metaphors while reporting the virus events and pandemic situations.These reports not only raise the public’s awareness on the crisis,but also strengthen people’s confidence.They play an important role in mobilizing the society to actively respond to the pandemic.Based on this background,this research employs Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Frame Theory to conduct a comparative study on the war metaphors in Covid-19 reports between China Daily and CNN.The systematic nature of frames is highly similar with the “domain” concept in CMT,which makes the connection of these two theories possible.Frame and metaphor both have the function of highlighting and omitting,this plays an important role in the meaning construction process of conceptual metaphors,thus can well explain the social significance of war metaphors in pandemic reports.Under the guide of Frame Theory,this study first constructs a “War-Pandemic” frame as the framework for analysis and set six classes of derivative war metaphors according to the six frame elements in the “War-Pandemic”frame.This research aims to answer three questions:（1）What’s the distribution of war metaphors in China Daily’s and CNN’s pandemic reports respectively?（2）What functions did war metaphors perform in the pandemic reports?（3）What are the differences of the use of war metaphors in each news media?（4）What political implications did war metaphors reveal?The detail war metaphor analysis is carried out in a corpus based approach,sixty pandemic reports are collected from China Daily and CNN,and two databases of detected war metaphors are built respectively.The qualitative analysis on war metaphor focuses first on the distribution in terms of its frequency,the analysis then focuses on the distribution of derivative war metaphors with an insight on their framing power.The research then reveals the main functions that war metaphors performed in pandemic discourse,and accompany with a discussion on the potential social and political implications they bring.The last part of qualitative analysis explores the similarities and differences of war metaphor used in China Daily and CNN,along with a possible explanation on the reasons of such commonality and diversity.The major findings show that there is a well-established tendency to talk about the experience of pandemic in terms of a violent confrontation,war metaphors are used very commonly in both China Daily’s and CNN’s pandemic reports.The analysis shows that there are different applications and realizations of war metaphors,and that these different applications differ in terms of the attitudes they express or reinforce.Some specific applications of war metaphors appear to be empowering and motivating,thus play an crucial role in the Covid-19 treatment by facilitating pandemic understanding,mobilizing the nation and arousing emotional identity.Others convey strong political implications so as to address a political stance or make criticism.Having the function to mobilize society,transmit political stance and facilitate pandemic understanding,war metaphors play an important role in uniting the public and international community to fight the virus together.War metaphors in China Daily’s reports perform a major function to mobilize the nation,and express a political stance that’s highly in line with China’s central government.War metaphors in CNN’s reports also conducts the function of mobilization,but it holds a critical stance with the Trump government and focus more on front line worker’s mental health situation.However,excessive and unreasonable use of war metaphors may also bring negative effects.The highlighting and hiding functions of metaphors may cause some social problems（such as the suffering of people during the epidemic,the suspension of economic and life after the epidemic,and the intensified social conflicts,etc.）to be ignored.The over-emphasis of the "enemy" in the metaphor of war may also lead to discrimination against people in Wuhan and patients carrying the virus,as well as some international conspiracy theories about the "Chinese virus".Therefore,the use of war metaphors must be reasonable and cautious.This study makes a multilevel comparative analysis on the use of war metaphors in COVID-19 reports from the perspective of conceptual metaphors and frame,which will help readers better understand this language phenomenon,and have a deeper understanding on its social impact and potential political implications.