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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 25, No. 0, pp.1-22
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2025
Received 13 Mar 2024 Revised 03 Aug 2024 Accepted 10 Oct 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.25..202501.1

A Cross-Cultural Analysis on Conceptual Metaphors Used in the Written Reports of Disease Outbreak by Mainstream Media

Jing Sun ; Yohan Hwang ; Dong-Jin Shin
(First author) Lecturer, Department of Foreign Languages, Lyuliang University 252033542@qq.com
(Second author) Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Jeonbuk National University yvh5101@jbnu.ac.kr
(Corresponding author) Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Jeonju University djshin@jj.ac.kr


© 2025 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This article compares conceptual metaphors related to COVID-19 as manifested in the written reports of mainstream media in China and the United States. According to the three steps of critical metaphor analysis proposed by Charteris-Black (2004), 12 conceptual metaphors in People’s Daily and 13 conceptual metaphors in The New York Times were identified separately by making use of two self-built corpora. The reasons for employing similar and different conceptual metaphors in the coverage of two media have been discussed with the help of the corpus analysis tool. Finally, this study finds that conceptual metaphors concerning COVID-19 have the function of transmitting information about COVID-19, producing a persuasive function, and conveying certain attitudes and ideologies. The findings facilitate cross-cultural communication on COVID-19 and confirm the universality and variations of conceptual metaphors influencing language use.

Keywords:

conceptual metaphor, COVID-19, contrastive analysis, critical metaphor analysis

Acknowledgments

This paper was supported by the research semester program of Jeonju University for the fall semester of 2024, granted to the corresponding author.

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