Il frame bellico nella comunicazione istituzionale sulla pandemia da coronavirus

Abstract

This study analyses the application of the frame of WAR to the representation of present coronavirus pandemic, particularly in texts issued by speakers belonging to Italian top institutions, such as the Ministry of Health, a variety of committees, boards, and agencies involved in handling the pandemic, and the most important and comprehensive medical professional association. The analysis of the data revealed a pervasive use of rhetorical and figurative linguistic devices, mostly metaphor, that draw conceptual and linguistic material from the domain of war, thus reviving a consolidated metaphorical projection in the representation of disease, that, in the texts included in this study, especially those produced by medics, yields markedly vivid and creative expressions.

Keywords

• metaphor
• metonymy
• medicine
• institutional communication
• coronavirus pandemic