Abstract
This study aims to establish ideological effects of the pre-pandemic metaphor use in the mainstream media on users’ perceptions of their relationship with technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve that, 120 media articles from global mainstream media sources during the pre-pandemic period were collected and analysed at three levels: (1) metaphor identification; (2) deconstruction of conceptual source domains; (3) the coding of metaphorical expressions into psychological types of interpersonal relationships that are projected on technologies. The established metaphorical patterns were tested in an online survey with 100 young adults and adults from Lithuania during the COVID-19 pandemic period of 2019-2020. The research findings resulted in the ideological perceptions of Reversed Agentivity and Mechanised Action characterising our relationship with technology and pointing out to the loss of individual autonomy, a lack of personal growth and more fragmented personal identity during the pandemic.
About the authors
Liudmila Arcimavičienė is an Associate Professor of English Linguistics at Vilnius University of Lithuania, teaching discourse analysis and political discourse at the Faculty of Philology, Institute of Foreign Languages. Her research interests include but are not limited to critical metaphor analysis, critical discourse analysis, ideological framing in the media, conflict and metaphor, populism and metaphor, gender and metaphor.
Adam Mastandrea is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Multilingual Studies in the Faculty of Philology at Vilnius University. His research focuses on identity in discourse, disinformation discourses and educational psychology.
Irena Snukiškienė is a doctorate student at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore and a junior assistant at Vilnius University. Her dissertation topic is “Ethnolinguistics. The essence and transformations of moral values. TRUTH and LIE from a cognitive research perspective”. Besides ethnolinguistics and cognitive linguistics, her academic interests include translation theory and practice, and foreign language didactics.
Lina Marčiulionytė is a lecturer at the at the Faculty of Philology of Vilnius University. Her research interests lie in critical discourse analysis, academic discourse and teaching methodologies.
Rūta Burbaitė is a lecturer at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of Vilnius University, with her research interest in translation theories and practice, classical languages and academic discourse.
References
Alex, Athira & A.T.P. Farisha. 2021. Overcoming Shame: A Positive Psychology Perspective. In Claude-Helene Mayer, Elisabeth Vanderheiden & Paul T. P. Wong (eds), Shame 4.0, 177–191. Cham: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59527-2_1010.1007/978-3-030-59527-2_10Search in Google Scholar
Brock, Andre. 2018. Critical technocultural discourse analysis. New Media & Society 20(3). 1012–1030.10.1177/1461444816677532Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Natalie, Kitty Te Riele, Becky Shelley & Jessica Woodroffe. 2020. Learning at home during COVID-19: Effects on vulnerable young Australians. Independent Rapid Response Report. Available at: https://www.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1324268/Learning-at-home-during-COVID-19-updated.pdf (accessed 09/09/2021).Search in Google Scholar
Burgess, Simon & Hans Sievertsen. 2020. Schools, skills, and learning: The impact of COVID-19 on education. VoxEu. Org, 1. Available at: https://voxeu.org/article/impact-COVID-19-education (accessed 09/09/2021).Search in Google Scholar
Cameron, Lynne. 2003. Metaphor in educational discourse (Advances in Applied Linguistics). London, UK: Continuum.Search in Google Scholar
Cameron, Lynne. 2013. Metaphor in spoken discourse. In James Paul Gee & Michael Handford (eds.), The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis, 368–381. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2006. Britain as a container: Immigration metaphors in the 2005 election campaign. Discourse & Society 17(5). 563–581.10.1177/0957926506066345Search in Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2011. Politicians and rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230319899Search in Google Scholar
Cross, Gary. 2017. Consumed Nostalgia. New York: Columbia University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Douglas, Karen, Joseph E. Uscinski, Robbie M. Sutton, Aleksandra Cichocka, Turkay Nefes, Chee S. Ang, & Farzin Deravi, 2019. Understanding conspiracy theories. Political Psychology 40 (1). 3–35.10.1111/pops.12568Search in Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1982. Frame semantics. In Dirk Geeraerts (ed.), Cognitive linguistics: Basic readings, 373–400. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1972. The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language (trans. AM Sheridan Smith). New York: Pantheon Books.Search in Google Scholar
Fromm, Erich. 2001. The Fear of Freedom. London and New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
García-Orosa, Berta, Xose López-García & Jorge Vázquez-Herrero. 2020. Journalism in digital native media: Beyond technological determinism. Media and Communication 8(2). 5–15.10.17645/mac.v8i2.2702Search in Google Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond. 1992. Categorization and metaphor understanding. Psychological Review 99(3). 572–577.10.1037/0033-295X.99.3.572Search in Google Scholar
Goatly, Andrew. 2007. Washing the brain: Metaphor and hidden ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/dapsac.23Search in Google Scholar
Gray, Jonathan, Liliana Bounegru & Tomaso Venturini. 2020. “Fake news” as infrastructural uncanny. New media & society 22(2). 317–341.10.1177/1461444819856912Search in Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. New York: Garland Pub.Search in Google Scholar
Hertlein, Katherine & Leonard E. van Dyck. 2020. Predicting engagement in electronic surveillance in romantic relationships. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 23(9). 604–610.10.1089/cyber.2019.0424Search in Google Scholar
Ihde, Don. 1990. Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Johnson, Mark. 1994. Moral imagination: Implications of cognitive science for ethics. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226223230.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Kalinina, Ekaterina & Manuel Menke. 2016. Negotiating the past in hyperconnected memory cultures: post- Soviet nostalgia and national identity in Russian online communities. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 12(1). 59–74.10.1386/macp.12.1.59_1Search in Google Scholar
Kopytowska, Monika & Radosław Krakowiak. 2020. Online incivility in times of COVID-19: Social disunity and misperceptions of tourism industry in Poland. Russian Journal of Linguistics 24(4). 743–773. DOI: 10.22363/2687‐0088‐2020‐24‐4‐743‐773.10.22363/2687‐0088‐2020‐24‐4‐743‐773Search in Google Scholar
Kaun, Anne & Fredrik Stiernstedt. 2014. FB time: technological and institutional affordances for media memories. New Media & Society 16(7). 1154–1168.10.1177/1461444814544001Search in Google Scholar
Klein, Colin, Peter Clutton & Adam G. Dunn. 2019. Pathways to conspiracy: The social and linguistic precursors of involvement in Reddit’s conspiracy theory forum. PloS one 14(11). e0225098. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.022509810.1371/journal.pone.0225098Search in Google Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltan. 2004. Introduction: Cultural variation in metaphor. European Journal of English Studies 8(3). 263–274.10.1080/1382557042000277386Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic books.Search in Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1996. Moral Politics: how liberals and conservatives think. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lederman, Doug. 2020. Will shift to remote teaching be boon or bane for online learning. Available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2020/03/18/most-teaching-going-remote-will-help-or-hurt-online-learning (accessed 09/09/2021).Search in Google Scholar
Lokanath, Mishra, Tushar Gupta & Abha Shree. 2020. Online teaching-learning in higher education during lockdown period of COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Educational Research Open (1).10.1016/j.ijedro.2020.100012Search in Google Scholar
Musolff, Andreas. 2016. Political metaphor analysis: Discourse and scenarios. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.Search in Google Scholar
Musolff, Andreas. 2018. The “legitimation” of hostility towards immigrants’ languages in press and social media: Main fallacies and how to challenge them. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 14(1). 117–131.10.1515/lpp-2018-0006Search in Google Scholar
Niemeyer, Katharina & Emily Keightley. 2020. The commodification of time and memory: Online communities and the dynamics of commercially produced nostalgia. New Media & Society 22(9). 1639–1662.10.1177/1461444820914869Search in Google Scholar
Peters, John D. 2015. The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226253978.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Pragglejaz Group. 2007. MIP: A method for identifying metaphorically used words in discourse. Metaphor and symbol 22(1). 1–39.10.1080/10926480709336752Search in Google Scholar
Pratt, Madara & Sarma Cakula. 2020. The Impact of Using Technology-Based Communication on Quality of Work Relationships. Baltic Journal of Modern Computing 8(1). 143–153.10.22364/bjmc.2020.8.1.07Search in Google Scholar
Rasmitadila, Rasmitadila, Rusi Rusmiati Aliyyah, Reza Rachmadtullah, Achmad Samsudin, Ernawulan Syaodih, Muhammad Nurtanto, & Anna Riana Suryanti Tambunan. 2020. The Perceptions of Primary School Teachers of Online Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic Period: A Case Study in Indonesia. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies 7(2). 90–109.10.29333/ejecs/388Search in Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol. 2006. Words and their metaphors: A corpus-based approach. Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 171. 63–105.10.1515/9783110199895.63Search in Google Scholar
Urbonaitė, Justina, Inesa Šeškauskienė & Jurga Cibulskienė 2019. Linguistic metaphor identification in Lithuanian. In Susan Nacey, Aletta G. Dorst, Tina Krennmayr & W. Gudrun Reijnierse (eds), Metaphor Identification in Multiple Languages. MIPVU around the world, 160–181. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/celcr.22.08urbSearch in Google Scholar
Wiederhold, Brenda K. 2020. Using social media to our advantage: Alleviating anxiety during a pandemic. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 23(4). 197–198.10.1089/cyber.2020.29180.bkwSearch in Google Scholar
Wrzesińska, Magdalena A., Kamila Knol-Michałowska, Patryk Stecz, Monika Kopytowska & Katarzyna Binder-Olibrowska. 2021. Internet risky behaviours among youth with visual impairment. PeerJ9, e12376. Available at: https://peerj.com/articles/12376/(accessed 12/11/2021).10.7717/peerj.12376Search in Google Scholar
Zelizer, Barbie. 2019. Why journalism is about more than digital technology. Digital Journalism 7(3). 343–350.10.4324/9781003016397-3Search in Google Scholar
Appendix 1 Survey Questions
| Type | Survey questions | |
|---|---|---|
| Closed | (1) | 2 multiple choice categories: |
| (content) | ♦ | Question: How much time do you spend on using any kind of technology a day? |
| ♦ | Statement: I use technology in bed before I go to sleep every night. | |
| (2) | 14 statements to rate on the scale of 5: | |
| ♦ | I think I spend too much time on my cell phone. | |
| ♦ | I use technology while eating at home with family members. | |
| ♦ | I believe that technologies are positively affecting my professional (university/work) life (i.e., I accomplish my professional tasks better, I build better relationships at my workplace). | |
| ♦ | I believe that technologies are positively affecting my social life (i.e., how I communicate with my friends, acquaintances, and how I build social relationships outside my family). | |
| ♦ | I believe that technologies are positively affecting my personal life (i.e., relationships with my family members, romantic partner, spouse). | |
| ♦ | I feel more isolated and lonelier from the world if I cannot access my social media accounts. | |
| ♦ | To become a successful person, you must be on the social media and use technology a lot. | |
| ♦ | The use of technologies makes me feel more active (i.e., I can learn more about other people, places, I can find a lot of useful information that I can practically use in my life.) | |
| ♦ | The use of technologies makes me feel more competitive in life (i.e., I feel that I know more and can subsequently achieve more). | |
| ♦ | The use of technologies makes me feel more connected to the world (i.e., I can follow the newsfeed of the people I know, scroll down the news, know much about other people around me). | |
| ♦ | With the use of technologies, I feel more balanced in my life (i.e., I can handle my life well, I feel calmer, more grounded and clear-headed). | |
| ♦ | I feel that I am emotionally attached to the use of technologies (i.e., I have a need to use technology, and I feel incomplete without using it). | |
| ♦ | I sometimes feel that technology disrupts my private life and has a more negative effect on my personal relationships. | |
| Open (content) | - | Statement: Describe how technology has been affecting your life. |
| Closed | ♦ Age Group | |
| (demographic) | ♦ Gender | |
| ♦ Education | ||
| Total | 20 | |
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
