Metaphors of COVID-19 in public discourse: A cross-linguistic and crosscultural gain-loss framing perspective

Abstract

Metaphors are both cognitively and culturally motivated (Kövecses, 2003) and can serve as an effective framing device (Burgers, Konijn, & Steen, 2016; Lakoff, 2002). Similarly, gain and loss framing has been shown to effectively shape public health behaviors (e.g., Cho & Boster, 2008; Cho & Choi, 2010; Gallagher & Updegraff, 2012; Kim, 2012) based on the Prospect Theory of human decision-making (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). This study aims to synergize these two influential theories of human cognition and behavior. We analyze how metaphors can frame COVID-19 issues from either a gain or loss perspective in health communication. Our cross-linguistic and cross-cultural study is based on the comparison of COVID-19 metaphors in the Hong Kong SAR (HK) and the UK and the assumption that the choices of metaphors and frames depend on the socio-cultural contexts. Two corpora were compiled for this study: 1) the HK Chief Executive’s public speeches in Chinese (42,015 words) addressing COVID-19 issues and 2) the UK Prime Minister’s public statements in English (87,359 words) at COVID-19 press conferences. We aim to explore both the similarities or differences in these two corpora and their implications of the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural influence on metaphorical framing in public health campaigns. COVID-19 metaphors and the associated gain/loss frames will be identified with a bottom-up approach.Preliminary analysis of WAR metaphors of Covid-19 shows that the HK Chief Executive used more gainframed WAR metaphors than the UK Prime Minister (NR = 78.31 vs. 35.49, LL = +98.23, LR = +1.14) to emphasize the aspect of ‘fighting the pandemic and protecting the Hong Kong citizens through vaccination’. By comparison, the UK Prime Minister used more loss-framed WAR metaphors focusing on the ‘threat, struggle, and damage caused by the pandemic’ than the HK Chief Executive (NR = 8.81 vs. 5.00, LL = -5.87, LR = -0.82). The differences may be attributable to the different governmental responses to the pandemic. HK implemented strict prevention and control measures with lower infection rates and individual losses; thus, the collective gain of fighting against the pandemic was emphasized. The UK government, however, followed the herd immunity principle, and the UK citizens resisted social control measures, leading to a relatively higher risk of infection and individual losses. These findings reflect that WAR metaphors' gain and loss framing is attributable to the targets of gain and loss (e.g., collective gain vs. individual loss). Further cross-linguistic analysis of Chinese and English metaphors of Covid-19 will be conducted, and implications on the strategic deployment of metaphors in different cultural contexts will be proposed.