MILITARY METAPHOR AS A WAY OF UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF “CORONAVIRUS” IN THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE AND RUSSIAN-LANGUAGE MEDIA

Abstract

This article is dedicated to a problem of representation of the spread of coronavirus infection in the media. The subject of the study is the conceptosphere of political discourse, and the object is the metaphorical concept “coronavirus”. The material of the study is articles published in the leading English-language and Russian-language Internet versions of print media. The collection of materials from authentic sources is an attempt to identify metaphorical combinations of concepts about the coronavirus pandemic, which are actively used in the media in order to attract a wide range of readers. The main attention is paid to the metaphorical model “War”, which is actualised in the media with the help of the lexicon of the source sphere “War”, represented by such thematic groups as “War and its signs”, “Participants of military actions”, “War zone”, “Enemy actions”, “Opposition to the enemy”, “Battle plan”.