Metaphors and metonymies used in memes to depict COVID-19 in Jordanian social media websites

Abstract

This study provides an analysis of the monomodal and multimodal metaphors and metonymies depicting COVID-19 in a corpus of 250 memes. The theoretical framework adopted in this study included Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), Forceville's (2008) Mono-modal and Multimodal Metaphor Theory, and Musolff’s (2006) approach in identifying source domains scenarios. Various source domains that depict different aspects of COVID-19 were used, and some of them reflected certain aspects of the Jordanian culture. The analysis also revealed that multimodal metaphors were more frequent compared to monomodal ones. Primarily, the researchers ascribed the salient presence of multimodality to the medium-determined specificities characteristic where pictorial and textual cues are carefully selected to reinforce the message the meme intends to convey. Furthermore, conceptualizing a new pandemic required the pervasive use of multimodality. The analysis also demonstrated the crucial role of metonymy in interpreting certain conceptual metaphors.

Keywords

• Cognitive linguistics
• Metaphor
• Metonymy
• Memes
• Monomodality
• Multimodality