Metaphors and pandemics

Spanish Flu and Coronavirus in US newspapers. A case-study

Abstract

The international outbreak of Coronavirus has challenged the stability of our contemporary societies. However, this is not the first time that humanity is facing a global pandemic. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic led to one of the most lethal pandemics. Metaphors play a fundamental role in influencing how we think and talk about health and illness. With an understanding of how the Coronavirus and the Spanish Flu are metaphorically represented in newspaper discourse, it would be easier to shed light on the linguistic process through which metaphors work and to understand to what extent socio-historical-cultural conditions may affect the actualisation of a metaphor. This paper shows that metaphors are consistently present in both time contexts and Coronavirus and Spanish Flu are similarly metaphorically represented. This might suggest the existence of a rhetoric of pandemics which goes beyond the specific socio-cultural and political context: a response to a threat as a pandemic is deeply related with human nature.