Konzeptuelle Metaphern zu Corona und der COVID-19-Pandemie in Kinderbüchern für das Kindergarten- und Grundschulalter

This papers contributes to the growing body of literature on the use of conceptual metaphors to frame the COVID-19 pandemic and the corona. Whereas previous linguistic analyses have focused on the use of metaphors by politicians and in the media, this paper is concerned with German children’s books...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 2022-08, Vol.50 (2), p.363-396
Main Author: Zima, Elisabeth
Format: Article
Language:ger
Subjects:
Childrens literature
Cognitive semantics
Conceptual metaphor
COVID-19
Disease transmission
German language
Kindergarten
Political discourse
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This papers contributes to the growing body of literature on the use of conceptual metaphors to frame the COVID-19 pandemic and the corona. Whereas previous linguistic analyses have focused on the use of metaphors by politicians and in the media, this paper is concerned with German children’s books and the use of conceptual metaphors therein that involve the target domains coronavirus, virus transmission, and virus proliferation as well as counter measurements and reactions of the immune system. The analysis reveals that war-metaphors, which are salient in political and media discourse, are much less dominant in children’s books. The books systematically draw on source domains that are well entrenched in children’s everyday experience, such as police, quarrelling, partying, playing in the sandbox, jumping, surfing, and travelling. Furthermore, ontological metaphors and more specifically personifications are widespread, with the virus being construed as a curious adventurer without genuinely bad intentions, a villain or monster and even a savior. The paper is grounded in Cognitive Semantics and more specifically in Conceptual Metaphor Theory and provides multimodal analyses that pay attention to both verbally and visually expressed information and metaphorical mappings.
ISSN:0301-3294
1613-0626
DOI:10.1515/zgl-2022-2058