ABSTRACT

Political discourse relies heavily on specific discursive strategies to gain, exercise and sustain power. Among those are metaphors which have the power to persuade and the potential to carry certain ideological attachments with them. This study explores and discusses how political power holders in The Grand National Assembly of Turkey make use of conceptual metaphors while framing the COVID-19 outbreak. From 10 March to 10 June 2020, i.e. the time between the date of the first COVID-19 case in Turkey until the time when the government announced that the lockdown would start to ease, a total of 191 tweets were identified as metaphorically framing the pandemic. In accordance with Critical Metaphor Analysis and Discourse-Historical Approach, the results show that Turkish online political discourse uses COVID-19 metaphors in combination with specific argumentation schemes to foster self-presentationand promotes shared representations of Turkish national identity. The results also show that metaphorical framings of the pandemic in Turkish political discourse fit familiar experience patterns with roots in cultural and religious presuppositions. It is argued that the conceptual metaphors manifested in this crisis discourse act as significant tools to influence public opinion.

摘要

政治话语在很大程度上依赖于特定的话语策略来获得、行使和维持权力。其中有隐喻，它们具有说服力，并有可能带有某些意识形态依附。本研究探讨并讨论了土耳其大国民议会中的政治权力持有者如何在构建 COVID-19 爆发时使用概念隐喻。从 2020 年 3 月 10 日至 6 月 10 日，即从土耳其出现第一例 COVID-19 病例之日到政府宣布将开始放松封锁的时间，共有 191 条推文被确定为隐喻地框定了大流行. 按照批判性隐喻分析和话语-历史方法，结果表明，土耳其在线政治话语使用 COVID-19 隐喻与特定的论证方案相结合，以促进自我表现并促进土耳其民族认同的共同表现。结果还表明，土耳其政治话语中流行病的隐喻框架符合熟悉的经验模式，其根源在于文化和宗教预设。有人认为，在这场危机话语中表现出来的概念隐喻是影响公众舆论的重要工具。