The Universal Culture of COVID-19 as Provoked by the War Against COVID-19 Metaphor

Previous studies tackling the subject of the COVID-19 pandemic found that most of the metaphors used in different genres on the subject are related to war. These war metaphors have been found to have the effects of raising awareness and creating a sense of urgency about the situation, therefore gaining support, bringing calm and stability, and promoting some emotional interaction. This study focused on the Arabic metaphors used during the different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, i.e., from the time the pandemic began to emerge to the time of lockdown and curfew to the invention of the vaccine and of the suggestion of taking multiple doses. Data were collected from Twitter using its advanced search engine. The importance of this study lies in the fact that previous studies tackling the topic have not focused on metaphors using such a diachronic approach. Furthermore, the causes and effects of using COVID-19 metaphors in previous studies were found to be similar to the ones in this study. The resulting metaphors reflected some of the diachronic changes brought on by the COVID-19 global situation. These results are indicative of the match between the global situation invoked by the pandemic and the conceptualization of this situation as realized in language regardless of which language this is or to what culture it belongs.