Visual and multimodal metaphors in the conceptualization of COVID-19

Abstract

This article intends to contribute to a social discussion about the metaphorical representation of the dynamics of contamination, contagion, and lethality of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, in the first months of the pandemic. Accordingly, the analysis addresses the conceptualization process underlying visual and multimodal metaphors that refer to the virus, the disease, and the pandemic phenomenon. It is focused on a set of visual and multimodal nature texts, constitutively metaphorical, collectively constituted by under graduation students of Letras, in an activity that sought to critically reflect on the role of metaphor in the coronavirus pandemic social narrative in 2020. By articulating theoretical constructs that aim to understand metaphor in a cognitive linguistic perspective (conceptual domains, visual metaphor, multimodal metaphor) and associating principles of the Grammar of Visual Design (compositional meta-function), the analysis is dedicated to the interpretation of the metaphorical conceptualization process involved in the discursivization of the health crisis, as well as the explanation of the effects of meaning projected by the discursive practices under study. In addition to recursive updating of conceptual metaphors such as DISEASE IS A JOURNEY and DISEASE IS A WAR, data analysis reveals that the social experience of the pandemic is also constructed by the personification of the coronavirus, the conceptualization of contagion as a chain reaction caused by human action, by the projection of government leaders in fictional characters known for childishness, and the metaphorization of the Brazilian people as blind and festive.