Professor of Communication Studies and Public Health John Pollock, co-editor of the new book, COVID Communication: Exploring Pandemic Discourse.
“Is our resistance to COVID-19 a ‘fight’ or a ‘game of chess’? A ‘football game’ or a ‘nightmare’? Do we need a ‘battle plan’ or a ‘map’? ‘COVID Communication: Exploring Pandemic Discourse’ calls for more attention to the metaphorical choices we make, pointing to the dangers of framing disease response as aggression. This new book calls attention to the potential of metaphors to enable more community-oriented approaches to disease response,” explains Dr. Pollock. “When we see healing as a journey rather than as a war, perhaps we are less likely to frame other countries as our enemies and more likely to accept that recovery (both at individual and societal scaled) will be slow, meandering, and require cooperative action. Metaphors structure thought, so we ought to metaphorize with attention and intention.”