IMAGES OF WAR: COVID-19 IN NOMINATIONS AND CONTEXTS IN MEDIA DISCOURSE

Abstract

The paper reveals the peculiarities of coronavirus nominations and its contexts in media discourse in British, American, and Chinese linguocultures. The purpose of the article is to show the reaction of language to modern challenges, such as COVID-19, identifying cultural differences to indicate various attitudes of the society. As coronavirus has begun to proliferate on a global scale, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spread of COVID-19 a pandemic. Journalists have begun to use not only the officially accepted name of the disease (COVID-19), which is free from connotations, but also coin metaphors, emphasizing different qualities of the virus and trying to draw the public’s attention. Moreover, they fill the immediate context with a plethora of general military terms. Such content helps to show that the disease is the enemy, which is at war with all nations. The following metaphorical expressions have been selected from British, American and Chinese online newspapers (25 articles with 70,000 signs in total): "Chinese virus", "China virus", "Wuhan virus", "Kung-Fu", "insidious force", "threat", "challenge", "invisible (unseen) enemy", "big unknown", "catastrophe", "viral Katrina", "nightmare", "ember", "plague", "killer pandemic", "mystery illness" and some others. The authors distributed them into five groups. The article demonstrates the origin of the virus's name and its link to a military sphere that manifests itself through nominations and immediate context. Such a grouping shows that in mass media discourse COVID-19 is described in various ways, which arouses a wide spectrum of emotions: from interest and excitement to fear.

Keywords

• коронавирус
• метафора
• политический дискурс
• дискурс масс-медиа
• отношение
• coronavirus
• metaphor
• political discourse
• mass media discourse
• attitude