Conceptual metaphors for coronavirus and the COVID-19 pandemic in books for children of kindergarten and primary school age

This papers contributes to the growing body of literature on the use of conceptual metaphors to frame the COVID-19 pandemic and the corona. Whereas previous linguistic analyses have focused on the use of metaphors by politicians and in the media, this paper is concerned with German children's books and the use of conceptual metaphors therein that involve the target domains coronavirus,virus transmission, and virus proliferation as well as counter measurements and reactions of the immune system. The analysis reveals that war-metaphors, which are salient in political and media discourse, are much less dominant in children's books. The books systematically draw on source domains that are well entrenched in children's everyday experience, such as police, quarrelling, partying, playing in the sandbox, jumping, surfing, and travelling. Furthermore, ontological metaphors and more specifically personifications are widespread, with the virus being construed as a curious adventurer without genuinely bad intentions, a villain or monster and even a savior. The paper is grounded in Cognitive Semantics and more specifically in Conceptual Metaphor Theory and provides multimodal analyses that pay attention to both verbally and visually expressed information and metaphorical mappings.