"Beat the killer disease" : A corpus-driven discourse study on conceptual metaphors in British newspapers

Abstract: This paper investigates the dominant metaphors in corpora constructed of British online news publications. It uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis, consisting of corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, and agenda setting theory. The corpus, broken down into several sub-corpora, was investigated using collocate and KWIK tools in order to shed light on possible conceptual metaphors in the disease domain. The results showed that there were three major conceptual metaphor mappings; DISEASE IS A POSSESSION, PEOPLE ARE CONTAINERS and CONTROL IS UP. These metaphors in turn emphasised the individual’s culpability in the spreading of the disease and that the government’s preferred response was containing the disease. The most salient attributes in the disease discourse related to the severity of the disease or the government’s defensive response to the virus. In sum, the results provide discursive framings of COVID-19 disease in the British news and show how the conventional metaphor mappings function might affect the public opinion.