When life is no longer a journey

The effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the metaphorical conceptualization of life among Hungarian adults – a representative survey

Bibliographic Data

ID12197059
AuthorsRéka Benczes (0000-0002-3481-8279, Corvinus University of Budapest , Budapest , Hungary, corresponding author), Istvan Benczes (0000-0002-7309-6213, Corvinus University of Budapest , Budapest , Hungary), Bence Ságvári (0000-0001-5862-4789, HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences , Budapest , Hungary), Lilla Petronella Szabó (0000-0001-5509-2158, Corvinus University of Budapest , Budapest , Hungary)
Year2024
Volume35
Issue1
Pages143-165
Publication date2024-01-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCognitive Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0936-5907 • E-ISSN: 1613-3641
PublisherDe Gruyter Mouton (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/cog-2023-0050
OpenAlexW4390698847
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited57

There is ample research on how metaphors of life vary both cross-culturally and within culture, with age emerging as possibly the most significant variable with regard to the latter dimension. However, no representative research has yet been carried on whether variation can also occur across time. Our paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by exploring whether a major crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can induce variation in how life is metaphorically conceptualized throughout society. By drawing on the results of a nationwide, representative survey on the metaphorical preferences for life among Hungarian adults carried out during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we hypothesized that the pandemic would induce a revolutionary change (in the sense of the change being swift, as opposed to gradual) in how Hungarian adults metaphorically conceptualize life , as compared to the metaphorical preferences of the pre-COVID-19 era. We expected this variation to manifest itself in the emergence of novel metaphorical source domains and a realignment in metaphorical preferences. Our results, however, indicate that novel conceptualizations emerged only as one-off metaphors; Hungarians mostly rely on a stock collection of life metaphors even in times of crises, with changes happening mostly in the form of shifts in metaphorical preferences. Our study also found that the choice of preference of the source domains showed less alterations among older adults – implying that the older we get, the more resistant to change our metaphorical conceptualizations become, even under extreme conditions such as COVID-19

Conceptualization · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Linguistics · Metaphor · Pandemic · Preference · Sociology · Variation (astronomy · Cultural Differences and Values · Education Practices and Challenges · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Psychology · Social Psychology

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