COVID-19 and the metaphor of war (COVID-19 y la metáfora de la guerra)

Abstract

Metaphors provide easy-to-understand explanations for threatening and unexpected events and can guide behaviour. Some groups have used the metaphor of war in the current pandemic. However, this metaphor is inadvisable because it omits fundamental factors such as mutual care or empathy and causes breakdowns in both social behaviour and the democratic system. RESUMENLas metáforas ofrecen una explicación comprensible a fenómenos inesperados y amenazantes, a la vez que orientan el comportamiento. En la actual pandemia algunos grupos han activado la metáfora de la guerra. Esta metáfora resulta desaconsejable. Deja de lado aspectos fundamentales como el cuidado mutuo o la empatía y provoca disfunciones en el comportamiento social y en el funcionamiento del sistema democrático.

Governing humans and ‘things’: power and rule in Norway during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…Other critics find the war discourse to give confrontation, obedience and enmity primacy over solidarity (e.g. Sabucedo et al 2020). Such arguments are contradicted by the war discourse interweaving and collaborating with the dugnad discourse.…”

A More Competent, Warm, Feminine, and Human Leader: Perceptions and Effectiveness of Democratic Versus Authoritarian Political Leaders

“…The manner in which the media and politicians refer to social problems could shape the citizens' impressions on how problems should be solved and what types of leaders are most suitable in this regard. For example, as cited by Sabucedo, Alzate, and Hur (2020), employing a metaphor of war may be inadvisable in the current COVID-19 crisis. In accordance with the current results, promoting a perception of a crisis as a competitive situation including a war that should be won and competition between countries to obtain medical supplies rather than appealing for cooperation and solidarity may influence citizens to perceive democratic leaders as less capable of managing the crisis.…”

Metaphor, Nominalization, Appraisal: Analyzing Coronavirus-Related Headlines and Subheadings in China Daily and The Wall Street Journal

“…This is currently being revived by Xi Jinping as part of his rhetorical imagery (Gallelli, 2020); indeed, he officially declared a "people's war" against the virus in the early stages of the outbreak in the Hubei province. Perhaps also as a consequence of this, WAR/CONFLICT metaphors were taken up globally as a leitmotif in public communication about the pandemic (e.g., Grandi & Piovan, Rajandran, 2020;Sabucedo et al, 2020) 12 . At the same time, convergence towards this kind of conceptualization may also have been favored by a tendency to represent disease in terms of war already present in the Western culture, which has been shown by several studies (notably Sontag, 1991), as well as by the parallels that were drawn, as the disease spread worldwide, between the current situation and the Second World War, also in terms of the exceptional measures taken.…”