Metaphorical representation of coronavirus in Spanish and Brazilian cartoons

Abstract

The worldwide outbreak of Covid-19 epidemic has been profusely covered by the mass media in 2020. This research focuses on the metaphorical content of cartoons from prominent Spanish and Brazilian newspapers published online in March and April 2020. In these satirical drawings the virus is portrayed through two main modes of representation: pictorial and verbal. The conceptual metaphors conveyed in each cartoon were identified, analysed and classified into four source domain scenarios: arts and literature, conflicts, sports and games, and other. Mainly, two theories coming from Cognitive Linguistics, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, and Multimodal Metaphor Theory, have been used to approach this contrastive study in which the metaphorical representation of Covid-19 serves to offer a humorous and persuasive point of view about the impact of the pandemic in the Spanish and Brazilian society and the way the most important politicians of each country dealt with the sanitary crisis.
 
 Keywords: Spanish and Brazilian newspapers; cartoons; Covid-19; metaphorical representation; pictorial and multimodal metaphors.