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In:COVID-19: Metaphor and metonymy across languages and cultures
Edited by Xu Wen, Wei-lun Lu, Joe Lennon and Zoltán Kövecses
[Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication 11] 2025
► pp. 84–121

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Chapter 4
Virus is death, virus is life

 | University of Applied Sciences in Konin
 | University of Lodz
Published online: 6 October 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/milcc.11.04lew
Abstract
The paper focuses on the way casual conversations, social media discourses, and radio commentaries collected in the first months of the epidemic in Poland (March — December 2020) represent a range of figurative conceptualization types concerning the COVID-19 virus, the epidemic, and their social repercussions. The paper discusses the interplay between two main powerful construals of the virus and of the development of the pandemic — a positive one, abbreviated here to ‘life,’ and a negative one, ‘death.’ Our analysis finds a complementarity between these two construals, and indicates the presence of clusters of other patterns that either negate the facts or attribute them to mystical forces. The second part of the paper is a verification of these figurative patterns against the frequencies and collocations of related keywords found in the Polish monitor corpus (monco.frazeo.pl) during the same period of time. The final part of the paper analyzes the element of humor in social media discourses concerning the pandemic, and puts the findings into a psychological framing. The analysis was conducted using qualitative metaphor Cognitive Linguistic research methods and presented with regard to metaphor identification procedure.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research objectives and methodology
    • 2.1Research objectives and the data
    • 2.2Research methods
  • 3.Analysis of the data
    • Part I.virus dynamics [outburst, expansion, effects, containment]
      • (i)personification
      • (ii)agentivization
      • (iii)objectification [reification]
      • (iv)space/location
      • (v)event
    • Part II.isolation
      • (i)atomization
      • (ii)war
      • (iii)concentration camp
      • (remote) distance education
        • (i)obstacle course
        • (ii)distance education — séance
      • emotions (following isolation)
        • (i)racing
        • (ii)feeling thirsty
    • Part III.nature of the virus and the epidemic
      • A.virus is death
        • (i)death / doomsday, destruction
        • (ii)murderer — victims
        • (iii)imprisonment
        • (iv)encagement
        • (v)wave
        • (vi)crisis
        • (vii)loneliness
        • (viii)abyss/chasm
        • (ix)war: opponent/enemy
        • (x)muzzle
        • (xi)sports: Player of an opposite team at a football game
        • (xii)religious scenario: punishment by god for sins
      • B.virus is life
        • (i)hope
        • (ii)teacher
        • (iii)discoverer
        • (iv)life, reviver
        • (v)commodity to make profit on
        • (vi)sharpener
        • (vii)magnifying glass
        • (viii)bulb (light)
        • (ix)new opportunities
        • (x)virus is the best thing that happened to me
        • (xi)sedater
      • C.virus is a double-faceted gestalt
        • (i)turning point in life
        • (ii)catalyst
        • (iii)agent/cause
        • (iv)effort — rest
        • (v)banal — deadly
        • (vi)appears — disappears
        • JESUS (creative metaphor)
        • (vii)catastrophe — renaissance
        • (viii)weakness — fight — strength
        • (ix)depression/loneliness — closeness
        • (x)fear — joy
        • (xi)[wild animal] nature — culture
        • (xii)[time] compressor — [time] expander
        • (xiii)[literature frame] science fiction — historical novel
        • (xiv)nightmare — chance
        • reset
      • D.emotions (fear, hope, disgust, depression, boredom)
      • E.virus is unreal: Dream, madness, God’s intervention, game
        • (i)virus/pandemic is oniric [interface with category C]
        • (ii)sacrifice
        • (iii)dream, illusion
        • (iv)madness
        • (v)pandemic life is matrix
      • F.virus is fake
        • (i)psychosis /invented
        • (ii)media fact
        • (iii)lie
        • (iv)conspiracy
      • G.virus is an (extra)ordinary event
        • (i)regular accident at work
        • (ii)bringing no effect
        • Summary of the data analysis
  • 4.‘Virus’ word formation as instances of figurative creations
    • 4.1Compounds
    • 4.2Derivatives
    • 4.3Idiomatic expressions
    • 4.4Intertextuality
  • 5.Conclusions concerning the figurative portrayal of the epidemic
  • 6.Monitor corpus data and frequency profiles
    • 6.1Introduction
    • 6.2Figurative usage
  • 7.Social media as a pandemic optimism forum and resources
  • 8.Psychology of traumatic emotional states and their aftermath
  • 9.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Sources of the data
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Sources of the data
Casual conversations with family members, neighbors, university staff, shop assistants, customers, taxi drivers (collection period: March — December 2020).
Weekly magazines (issues from 1 February — 15 November 2020) Polityka, Wprost; online newspapers: Catholic press
Radio and TV channels: tokfm, Polish Radio I and II
Social media: Facebook, Twitter (X)
Polish corpus data: monco.frazeo.pl (MoncoPL) currently at : [URL]
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