‘Rough winds, big waves’. Metaphors and power in the Renmin Wang’s news commentaries on the Covid-19 crisis

This chapter investigates the legitimating discursive role of conceptual metaphors in the transformation of a crisis into a piece of positive propaganda in Chinese official media. The analysis explores the narrative regarding the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the first semester of 2020, by focusing on the discourse on individual, collective and institutional actors. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theories and on Critical Metaphor Analysis, the use of metaphors is examined based on a corpus of articles belonging to a selection of sub-genres of news commentary (新闻评论) published by the 人民网 [Renminwang]. This work studies how the dominant metaphors serve as a rhetoric means to lend legitimacy to the Party in a critical situation. Metaphors, by soliciting emotional adhesion and influencing conceptual interpretation, contribute to transforming the theme of the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity to promote national identity and to celebrate the vital role of the CPC in the country, veiling its political responsibilities with respect to the uncontrolled spread of the virus. The study adds to existing literature on the subject by foregrounding the weather theme (and its implications) in the official discourse.