COVID-19 Pandemic: What Is Behind the Scenes?

During the ongoing pandemic, the media has evolved into the primary conduit for individuals seeking information about the coronavirus. Concurrently, a proliferation of metaphors related to the covid-19 pandemic has emerged. These metaphors not only facilitate a vivid comprehension of the covid-19 pandemic but also play a crucial role in constructing and representing our cognitive framework concerning the pandemic’s multifaceted impacts on various aspects of our lives. This research endeavors to elucidate the cultural conceptualization of covid-19 pandemic in the Chinese context, laying the foundation for a more nuanced understanding of the crisis. A meticulous manual collection of 154 metaphors related to covid-19 pandemic was extracted from Chinese media webpages, including ‘Renmin Ribao’, ‘renminwang’, ‘QSTHEORY’, ‘Souhu’, ‘sina’, ‘lifeweek’ and ‘Fangfang Diary’ between February 15, 2020 and December 08, 2022. Employing a qualitative method, 17 Metaphors reflecting cultural conceptualization were extracted from the 154 covid-19 pandemic metaphors. This chapter adopts a cultural linguistic approach to analyzing covid-19 pandemic, utilizing the analytical framework provided by Cultural Linguistics, encompassing cultural schema, cultural category, and cultural metaphors. The reported cultural metaphors related to covid-19 are examined, and an analysis of the cultural background, values, beliefs and norms underpinning these cultural metaphors in the Chinese context is provided. The findings reveal that covid-19 pandemic is culturally conceptualized through metaphors such as war, leader, exam, opera, evil fruit, serious chess game, vine, bamboo mat, wind, dream, winter time, alcohol, a soldier riding horse, container, stick, snow, and illness. Notably, the war metaphor emerges as the most prevalent one, imbued with distinctive Chinese cultural nuances. The chapter concludes by underscoring the imperative for continued efforts to develop identification methods for the cultural concepts and metaphors relevant to the covid-19 pandemic.