Conceptual Metaphors With the Source Domain “Natural Disaster” in Healthcare Media Discourses on COVID-19: The Case of Vietnamese Online Newspapers

This study examines the metaphorical framework of “natural disaster” in health communication discourse on the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnamese online newspapers. Drawing on correlations in human experience and on knowledge projections from the source domain to the target domain, this paper clarifies the mapping mechanisms between the two conceptual spaces of “natural disaster” and “COVID-19 pandemic.” The paper explains the mechanisms of transference and attribute projection between the source and target spaces in linguistic cognition. From the principle of partial mapping in conceptual metaphor theory, the paper elucidates the hierarchical nature of conceptual thinking through the emergence of two metaphors related to two common types of natural disasters, namely “earthquake” and “tsunami”, in health communication discourse about the pandemic. Metaphorizing the pandemic as a type of natural disaster also implies its severity and promotes defensive measures and actions, thereby enhancing public awareness of disease prevention as well as encouraging cooperation and compliance with government and health authority regulations. Based on the logical relationships in the organization of metaphorical mapping schemas, the paper identifies the distinctive cognitive patterns in the conceptual structure of the COVID-19 pandemic and contributes to the clarification of how Vietnamese media conceptualize the pandemic and respond to COVID-19 as a global catastrophe in the early stage of the outbreak.