This paper bridges scholarship on events with that on metaphors, positing metaphors as a proxy for competing “forms of eventfulness.” Focusing specifically on the “wave” metaphor, I draw from 471 Governor's Covid-19 Briefing transcripts across ten governors—five Democratic, five Republican—from the year 2020 to identify two competing forms of eventfulness with respect to the Covid-19 pandemic. As I show, using both discourse analytic techniques and simple text counts, Democratic governors take up the “wave” metaphor to present what I call “cascading” eventfulness, defined by multiple conditional moments of rupture, or “waves.” In contrast, Republican governors largely avoid the “wave” metaphor to present what I call “calamitous” eventfulness, defined by a singular, decisive moment of rupture. I conclude with a discussion of how my findings contribute to scholarship on eventfulness and political ideology.

本文将事件学术与隐喻学术联系起来，将隐喻作为竞争“事件形式”的代理。我特别关注“浪潮”隐喻，从 2020 年以来 10 位州长（五位民主党、五位共和党）的 471 份州长 Covid-19 简报记录中，确定了与 Covid-19 大流行有关的两种相互竞争的事件形式。正如我所展示的，民主党州长使用话语分析技术和简单的文本计数，采用“波浪”隐喻来呈现我所说的“级联”事件，由多个有条件的破裂时刻或“波浪”来定义。相比之下，共和党州长们在很大程度上避免使用“波浪”比喻来呈现我所说的“灾难性”事件，即单一的、决定性的破裂时刻。