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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 23:4 (2024) ► pp.520–543

The use of metaphors to construct crisis discourses in describing COVID-19 vaccines in the Chinese and the American news media

A corpus-assisted critical approach

ORCID logo | City University of Hong Kong
ORCID logo | University of Macau
There have been limited studies comparing Chinese and American news media in their descriptions of vaccines, especially their use of metaphors in the context of COVID-19. Hence, this paper employs a corpus-assisted critical approach to examine the metaphors used in constructing crisis discourses relating to vaccines in Chinese and American newspapers. The study reveals four conceptual metaphors: WEAPON, MACHINE, TRAVELLER, and CONTEST. The usage of these metaphors is intertwined with wider discursive contexts, which are shaped by the two countries’ distinct journalistic and geopolitical/sociocultural contexts. These have resulted in the adoption of different strategies for handling the COVID-19 crisis, reflecting the ideologies of collectivism in China and capitalism in America. The study highlights the significance of metaphors in shaping the ideologies of governments and/or the public towards vaccines through news media. Additionally, this paper provides a useful framework for comparing metaphor usage in two large corpora using Wmatrix.
Keywords: corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis, COVID-19 vaccines, crisis discourse, the Chinese and the American news media
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.Data
  • 4.Analytical framework and procedures
  • 5.Comparison of word-semantic collocations related to “COVID-19” vaccines
  • 6.Comparison of metaphors in word-semantic collocations related to “COVID-19” vaccines
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Disclosure statement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22153.lu
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