The Rhetorical Implications of Metaphorical Entailments and Terministic Screens: An Analysis of the British Press’ Coverage of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This paper analyzes the rhetoric of British press reports on the COVID-19 pandemic. I combine terministic screens, metaphors, and metaphorical entailments to explicate a new theory on the impacts of metaphor. I argue that the vehicle of metaphor functions as a terministic screen and the impacts can be understood using metaphorical entailments. Under my theory, these entailments can be plotted onto an XY plane and compared with each other. Using this, I analyze the metaphors used by four British newspapers to assess the role of the press in shaping people’s perceptions of the pandemic and its consequences. I identify metaphors that (de)construct borders in order to denote an “other”; economic metaphors mixed with war and natural disaster metaphors to frame the pandemic as an economic, not health, problem; and war metaphors that rhetorically construct plastics and bodyweight as things that should be understood in terms of war.