JCERJournal of Contemporary Educational Research2208-84662208-8474Bio-Byword Scientific Publishing Pty. Ltd.10.26689/jcer.v5i5.2155ArticleA Comparative Analysis of War Metaphors in COVID-19 Reports in New York Times and China Dailyhttps://artdesignp.com/journal/JCER/5/5/10.26689/jcer.v5i5.2155XiaoYanmei2021552021-05-31This paper analyzed the use of war metaphors in COVID-19 news reported by the New York Times (NYT) in comparison to the China Daily from the 1st of February 2020 to the 29th of February 2020. Based on self-selected corpus from these two newspapers, a study was conducted to compare the contrasting lexis between NYT and China Daily, as well as to analyze the reasons for their differences using the Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA). It was found that China Daily preferred using war metaphors in COVID-19 reports and war-related words such as “fight,” “combat,” and “battle.” These words appeared frequently which demonstrated that Chinese people were fighting against the pandemic. However, these words were far less used in the NYT reports compared to China Daily and the use of these words were more related to the election, trade war, etc. This reflected their focus which was more on the impact of COVID-19 on politics and the economic sector.

Sabucedo, J., Alzate, M., Hur, D(2020). COVID-19 and the Metaphor of War. International Journal of Social Psychology (Online version).

Zhang, W., Mao, H., Wang, S(2015). An Analysis of Metaphors and Frames in Official Media Reports of Public Health Emergencies. Journal of Fujian Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 2(9): 100-108.

Charteris-Black, J(2004). Corpus approaches to Critical Metaphor Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan, 113-120.

Luo, X., Dong, J. & Zhang, X. (2019). A Comparative Study of Metaphors in China’s and Britain’s English News Reports on Chinese Cross-border E-commerce. International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science, 7(7), pp. 44-52.

Chiang, W., Duann, R(2007). Conceptual metaphors for SARS: ‘war’ between whom?. Discourse & Society, 18(5): 579-602.

Brawley, E., Gualda, E(2020). Transnational Social Implications of the Use of the “War metaphor” Concerning Coronavirus: A Bird’s Eye View. Culture e Studi del Sociale, Special issue, 5(1): 259-272.

Leo, A., David, M(2020). A Critical Metaphor Analysis on Malaysia’s Gazetted Metaphors amid the Movement Control Order: A COVID-19 Episode. Journal of Humanities and Social Science Research, 2(10): 193-204.

Rohela, P., Bhan, A., Ravindranath, D., Bose, D., Pathare, S(2020). Must there be a “war” against coronavirus? Indian Journal of Medical Ethics.

Sinha, P(2020). Stop Fighting the Coronavirus. Journal of Wellness, 2(1).

Ding, J., Yang, H(2020). The Virus as the Other: Discourse Analysis on Metaphor of COVID-19. Journal of Guangzhou University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 4: 104-112.

Chen, K(2012). Comparative Analysis of War Metaphor between Business English Discourse and Political Discourse and Economic Discourse - A Corpus-Based Research. Journal of Changchun University of Science and Technology, 7(3): 86-89.

Liu, Z(2019). Trauma, War, Beginning and Rebirth: Metaphors in the Memorial Reports of the “10th Anniversary of Wenchuan Earthquake”. Journalism & Communication Review, 72(6): 68-79.

Wen, J(2010). Advantages and Disadvantages of War Metaphors in the Reports of Public Health Emergency in China. Journal of Hubei TV University, 30(10): 105-106.

Nartey, M(2019). ‘I shall prosecute a ruthless war on these monsters...’: a critical metaphor analysis of discourse of resistance in the rhetoric of Kwame Nkrumah. Critical Discourse Studies, 16(2): 113-130.