ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic tempted some governments to promise to wage “war” against it and implement “world-beating” control mechanisms. In view of their limited success, such claims soon came in for massive criticism, which turned their hyperbolic implicatures and figurative framing against them. Our paper focuses on such cases of “metaphor reversal” within the context of the British public debate. Drawing on examples from a corpus of media texts, we identify several types of the dissociation, including irony (i.e., putting the figurative claims’ implicatures in doubt implicitly), sarcasm (i.e., explicitly decrying their plausibility) and satire (i.e., exhibiting their presumed absurdity), with reference to theory models of irony (echo, pretense, mental space structuring).

In conclusion, we argue that the seesaw of exchanges between exaggerated figurative claims of (imminent) success made by government politicians and their sarcastic-satirical debunking by media and opposition politicians has an ambivalent effect on public discourse. On the one hand, it highlights contrasts in policy and policy assessment and may also have entertainment value, but on the other hand, it conveys experiences of repeated, serial exposure of hyperbolic government rhetoric. This in turn may lead to an erosion of trust in official communication as being unrealistic, which may foster beliefs in conspiracy theories.

摘要

COVID-19 大流行诱使一些政府承诺对其发动“战争”并实施“世界一流”的控制机制。鉴于他们的成功有限，这些说法很快就受到了广泛的批评，这使得他们的双曲线含义和比喻框架对他们不利。我们的论文侧重于英国公开辩论背景下的这种“隐喻逆转”案例。借鉴媒体文本语料库中的例子，我们确定了几种类型的分离，包括讽刺（即隐含地质疑比喻性主张的含义）、讽刺（即明确谴责其合理性）和讽刺（即展示其假定的荒谬），参考反讽的理论模型（回声，伪装，心理空间结构）。

总之，我们认为，政府政客对（迫在眉睫的）成功的夸张比喻性主张与媒体和反对派政客的讽刺讽刺性揭穿之间的交流对公共话语产生矛盾的影响。一方面，它突出政策和政策评估的对比，也可能具有娱乐价值，但另一方面，它传达了反复、连续曝光双曲线政府言论的经验。反过来，这可能会导致对官方沟通不切实际的信任度下降，这可能会助长人们对阴谋论的信念。