COVID-19 is Disaster: A Corpus-Assisted Study of ‘Disaster’ Metaphorical Expressions in Daily Dawn (Jan-Dec 2020)

Abstract

Conceptual Metaphor Theory” (CMT) is a good tool for conceptualizing various phenomena. To understand how the COVID-19 pandemic (2019-2021) was understood, reported, and represented in Pakistan, COVID-19-related news stories were extracted from the daily, Dawn (January-December 2020) by using the Pragglejazz group of Identification Method for Metaphors (2007). The main purpose of the present research was to understand how fear was mongered and instilled in the people's hearts to keep them indoors. One way to achieve this aim is to represent something as dangerous, deathly, and imminent. One widely reported conceptual metaphor used to realize this objective was to represent COVID-19 as a disaster that is COVID-19 IS DISASTER. News stories extracted from Dawn were compiled into a Corpus for concordance using AntConc. The analysis revealed that the conceptual metaphors COVID-19 IS DISASTER and COVID-19 IS NATURAL DISASTER occurred with frequencies of 53 and 102 respectively. The findings prove the effectiveness of metaphors and their significance in understanding difficult situations, efficiently communicating ideas, and influencing the audience. Future research in this area would benefit from including more metaphor areas and search words or using larger corpora. A comparison with Urdu newspapers (which are more sensational and target the less-educated common man) may reveal further nuances of such metaphors.