The Omani Officials’ Use of the War Metaphor in COVID-19 Crisis Communication in Arabic

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate both the cognitive and emotional dimensions of the war metaphor in framing COVID-19 crisis communication in Oman and the coherence between the framing of the government’s response to COVID-19 and the government’s framing of the requisite public response. We examine the metaphorical realization of the war metaphor at the linguistic level using a metaphor identification procedure (MIP). The analysis shows that the cognitive and emotional dimensions are equally important in understanding how war metaphors are used to frame the COVID-19 crisis communication. We also show that there is coherence between the framing of the government’s response to the pandemic and that of the requisite public response to it, rendering this crisis communication successful from a framing perspective. Implications for health crisis research are discussed.