Conceptual Metaphor of COVID-19 in New York Times

Abstract

Conceptual metaphor is an important theory of cognitive metaphor. Its nature is recognized as a rhetoric within the scope of traditional metaphor research. It is a deliberate deviation of literal meaning and an optional discourse modifier. Cognitive metaphor holds that metaphor mechanism is the projection from the source domain to the target domain. In this process, the establishment of similarity is fundamental, and the similarity relationship can be divided into physical similarity and psychological similarity. Things can enter both ends of metaphor by virtue of these two similarity relationships to produce rich and complex conceptual metaphor, which makes metaphor everywhere in our life. As one of the important ways of information dissemination, news discourse has a strong ideological tendency and political motivation, which has a subtle impact on the psychology of readers. Therefore, from the perspective of cognitive linguistics, this paper uses conceptual metaphor theory to analyze the characteristics, types and cognitive mechanisms of conceptual metaphors in COVID-19 coverage in The New York Times. It provides ideas for discourse analysis of epidemic situation in the future.