Abstract
As a case of the metaphorical framing of risk, this chapter aims to explore metaphors of COVID-19 in Japanese, focusing on changes in metaphorical sources over time and their social backgrounds based on an analysis of metaphorical expressions in utterances directly quoted in newspaper articles. The study is based on 2,593 newspaper articles that include the keyword koronauirusu ‘coronavirus’. The three principal metaphor types found were opponent in war framing, natural phenomenon in disaster framing, and path in journey framing. The temporal change in the number of examples of each metaphor was closely linked to the “waves” of new infections. The results suggest that a temporal analysis of metaphorical framing can lead to a deeper understanding of perspective changes in risk discourse.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company