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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. 248–271

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Chapter 10
Standing together by standing apart

Distance, safety, and fictive deixis in COVID-19 storefront communication

 | The University of British Columbia
 | The University of British Columbia
 | The University of British Columbia
 | The University of British Columbia
Published online: 6 October 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/milcc.11.10dan
Abstract
This paper considers COVID-19 storefront communication in one specific context — the return to business after mandatory store closures. We gathered 214 storefront photographs in July and August 2020 and compared them with pre-COVID standard signs, to understand the major changes storefront discourse underwent. In our analysis, we focus on: (i) reference to underlying frames of Safety and Harm (Sweetser, 1999); (ii) re-construal of the concept of Distance; (iii) the role of imperatives and negative statements in signaling how preconditions of in-store transactions changed; (iv) re-construal of the deictic dimensions of space and time, and the relationship between the Speaker (the store) and the Hearer (the customer). We show that COVID storefront signs prompt a re-consideration of deixis and metaphor in multimodal business discourse.
Article outline
  • 1.Underlying frames and concepts
  • 2.The re-construal of distance and business relationship
  • 3.Re-negotiating the conditions of commercial interaction
  • 4.Deixis: Time and space, speaker and hearer
  • 5.“There is beauty in…”: Business identity and the customer’s identity
  • 6.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
References (43)
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