What ‘Corona War’ metaphor means in Iranian political discourse
Political leaders’ discourse plays a significant role in directing the public opinion during crises. Hence, this study analyzed 71 speeches delivered by Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran (2013- 2021), during the first and the second waves of COVID-19 pandemic (February 20 till August 30, 2020) as...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2021
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18536/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18536/1/51550-172431-1-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | Political leaders’ discourse plays a significant role in directing the public opinion during crises.
Hence, this study analyzed 71 speeches delivered by Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran (2013-
2021), during the first and the second waves of COVID-19 pandemic (February 20 till August
30, 2020) as the most critical period of the pandemic attack. This study drew upon Lakoff &
Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory as its theoretical background, and the analysis
of the speeches was comprised of metaphor identification using the Metaphor Identification
Procedure (MIP) and metaphor interpretation. The findings of the study reveal employment of
metaphorical representations of coronavirus as a discursive strategy to deal with the situation.
The main metaphorical representation of coronavirus was framing public cooperation and
national solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic as participating in a war. As argued in this
paper, the employed metaphors not only remained loyal to general war features, but they also
entailed a specific sociocultural image of war for the Iranian people based on their experience
and memories of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. Finally, this study recommends for future studies
to include the specific sociocultural context and historical background of the addressed
audience. This provides further insight into what metaphors specifically mean to the addressed
audience, which is beyond general metaphor use. This study is hoped to be a small step towards
bringing into spotlight the significance of sociocultural aspects and historical background as
necessary information to provide in-depth insights into what makes metaphors effective
communicative tools to specific audience. |
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