| Project Detail |
Rethinking crisis communication through metaphors
Months into the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that global society is faced with not only a health crisis, but also a crisis in social mobilisation and communication. Emerging research suggests that the pandemic is bringing a major reframing of the notions of collectivity and national belonging, where metaphorical political rhetoric is paving the way to sweeping coronationalisms across Europe. By locating the analysis in the post-Yugoslav, post-socialist area, where persisting nationalist tensions mix with pandemic discourses in complex ways, the EU-funded CRISMET project is laying the foundations for an interdisciplinary, language-driven study of crisis discourse grounded in the role of metaphor for rooting perceptions of the past, present and future.
Months into the Covid-19 pandemic, it is clear that global society is faced with an emergency of not only health, but of social mobilisation
and communication, unfolding in paths we are only beginning to discern. Emerging research suggests that the pandemic is bringing a major reframing of notions of collectivity and national belonging, where a figurative, metaphorical political rhetoric is paving ways to sweeping ‘coronationalisms’, across Europe. Certainly timely and appropriate, the academic and citizen interest in language of the
crisis points to public discourse metaphoricity as a new challenge for crisis research globally. By locating the analysis in the post-Yugoslav, post-socialist area, where persisting nationalist tensions mix with pandemic discourses in complex ways, this project lays the foundations for interdisciplinary, language-driven study of crisis discourse grounded in the role of metaphor for rooting perceptions of the past, present and future. The project thus addresses objectives on two levels: (1) exploring the (re)framings of collectivity, national belonging and nationalism in the post-Yugoslav political, media and citizen discourses, and (2) introducing a multi-dimensional metaphorical methodological approach to public discourse analysis, bringing together cognitive-linguistic metaphor study and social science study of politics, history and cultural memory, as an adaptable interdisciplinary model suited to approaching discourses of crisis and social transformation. The analyses, methodology and dedication to public debate together are expected to pave the way to rethinking effective crisis communication in this and other looming crises, by drawing on our pioneering insights on the conceptual role of language in mapping the real and symbolic borders and connections of (post-)pandemic Europe. |
