Cover not available

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. 170–188

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 7
Divergent conceptualizations of the COVID-19 pandemic and its management as a war in Britain and Germany

 | University of East Anglia
Published online: 6 October 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/milcc.11.07mus
Abstract
Soon after the COVID-19 pandemic spread to Western countries, it attracted a host of conceptualizations likening it to a military attack and the struggle against it to a defensive war. Leading politicians in Western countries, such as the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Trump — but not the German Chancellor Angela Merkel — used the pandemic-as-war metaphor to justify public health measures and limitations of economic and social activity as emergency measures in a quasi-military confrontation.
This chapter compares British and German reactions to such calls for ‘waging war on COVID-19’ and relates them to the public perception of the policies implemented by national governments’ to overcome the pandemic. Our database is a research corpus of British and German media texts from across the political range in both countries, which is investigated with regard to the role of metaphors in explaining and legitimating nation-specific political developments. By providing a corpus-based, qualitative comparison of the pandemic-as-war metaphors in Britain and Germany, the chapter highlights divergent trends in the figurative conceptualization of the pandemic within the same broad metaphor domain.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodological considerations: Metaphor and pandemic coverage
  • 3.COVID-19 as war scenarios in British and German media
    • 3.1Phase I: Churchillian war-spirit and bazooka-deployment
    • 3.2Phase II: Battles for World Leadership
    • 3.3Phase III: Lockdown battles and vaccine victories
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (43)
References
Aschwanden, C. (2020). The false promise of herd immunity for COVID-19. Nature, 587, 26–28.[URL]
Berber Sardinha, T. (2015). Register variation and metaphor use: A multi-dimensional perspective. In J. B. Herrmann & T. Berber Sardinha (Eds.), Metaphor in specialist discourse (pp. 17–51). John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bowdle, B. F., & Gentner, D. (2005). The career of metaphor. Psychological Review, 112(1), 193–216. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Buranyi, S. (2020a, August 14). ‘Vaccine nationalism’ stands in the way of an end to the Covid-19 crisis. The Guardian. [URL]
(2020b, September 4). How coronavirus has brought together conspiracy theorists and the far right. These protests aren’t just a symptom of public frustration. They represent a deliberate break with our shared reality. The Guardian. [URL]
Cameron, L. (1999). Operationalising ‘metaphor’ for applied linguistic research. In L. Cameron & G. Low (Eds.), Researching and applying metaphor (pp. 3–28). Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, J. (2004). Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Palgrave-Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2022). Metaphors of coronavirus: Invisible enemy or zombie apocalypse?. Palgrave-Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chiang, W.-Y., & Duann, R.-F. (2007). Conceptual metaphors for SARS: ‘war’ between whom?. Discourse & Society, 18(5), 579–602. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coleman, M. P. (2013). War on cancer and the influence of the medical-industrial complex. Journal of Cancer Policy, 1(3–4), 31–34. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dripke, A., & Miksch, M. (2020). Pandemie: Die Welt im Corona-Krieg. DC Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elwood, W. N. (1995). Declaring war on the home front: Metaphor, presidents, and the war on drugs. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 10, 93–114. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haddad, A. (2020, May 13). Metaphorical militarisation: Covid-19 and the language of war. The Strategist. [URL]
Herrmann, J. B., & Berber Sardinha, T. (2015). Metaphor in specialist discourse: Investigating metaphor use in specific and popularized contexts. In J. Berenike Herrmann & T. Berber Sardinha (Eds.), Metaphor in specialist discourse (pp. 3–14). John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hodges, A. (2011). The ‘war on terror’ narrative: Discourse and intertextuality in the construction and contestation of sociopolitical reality. Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jaworska, S. (2020, April 13). Is the war rhetoric around Covid-19 an Anglo-American thing?. Viral Discourse. [URL]
Koley, T. K., & Dhole, M. (2021). The COVID-19 pandemic: The deadly Coronavirus outbreak. Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kövecses, Z. (2002). Metaphor: A practical introduction. Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015). Where metaphors come from: Reconsidering context in metaphor. Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1993). The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 202–251). Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980/2003). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Larson, B. M. H. (2008). Entangled biological, cultural and linguistic origins of the war on invasive species. In R. M. Frank, R. Dirven, T. Ziemke & E. Bernárdez (Eds.), Body, language and mind, Vol. 2: Sociocultural situatedness (pp. 169–195). Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Li, N. (2020, July 22). How to construct COVID-19 as a national security threat in public discourse? Viral Discourse. [URL]
Musolff, A. (2000). Mirror images of Europe: Metaphors in the public debate about Europe in Britain and Germany. Iudicium.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2014). Metaphor in the discourse-historical approach. In C. Hart & P. Cap (Eds.), Contemporary critical discourse studies (pp. 45–66). Bloomsbury. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2016). Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and scenarios. Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nerlich, B., & Koteyko, N. (2009). MRSA — Portrait of a superbug: A media drama in three acts. In A. Musolff & J. Zinken (Eds.), Metaphor and discourse (pp. 153–169). Palgrave-Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Grady, C. (2020, March 20). The U.K. backed off on herd immunity. To beat COVID-19, we’ll ultimately need it. National Geographic. [URL]
Olza, I., Koller, V., Ibarretxe-Antuñano, I., Pérez-Sobrino, P., & Semino, E. (2021). The #ReframeCovid initiative. Metaphor and the Social World, 11(1), 98–120. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perrez, J., Reuchamps, M., & Thibodeau, P. (Eds.). (2019). Variations in political metaphor. John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Semino, E. (2021). “Not soldiers but fire-fighters” — Metaphors and Covid-19, Health Communication, 36(1), 50–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serhan, Y. (2020, March 31). The case against waging ‘war’ on the Coronavirus. The Atlantic. [URL]
Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as metaphor. Vintage Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1991). AIDS and its metaphors. Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steen, G., Dorst, A. G., Berenike Herrmann, J., Kaal, A., Krennmayr, T., & Pasma, T. (2010). A method for linguistic metaphor identification: From MIP to MIPVU. John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steuter, E., & Wills, W. (2008). At war with metaphor: Media, propaganda, and racism in the war on terror. Lexington Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tian, Y. L. (2020, March 13). In ‘people’s war’ on coronavirus, Chinese propaganda faces pushback. Reuters. [URL]
Tisdall, S. (2020, March 20). Lay off those war metaphors, world leaders. You could be the next casualty. The Guardian. [URL]
United Nations (2020, March 19). COVID-19: “We are at war with a virus” — UN Secretary-General. UN Regional Information Centre for Western Europe. [URL]
Vondermaßen, M. (2020). Warum wir keinen Krieg gegen das Corona-Virus führen (und auch nicht damit anfangen sollten). Universität Tübingen. [URL]
Warsame, A. M. (2020). Krieg gegen das Corona-Virus Ich als freiwilliger Ersthelfer. Versucht, Leben zu retten. Verlag Unser Wissen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, R. (2009). The discourse-historical approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis: Introducing qualitative methods (pp. 63–94). Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue