War Metaphors and Politics: How do Conservative and Liberal Newspapers differ?

Abstract

Currently, the entire world is trying to cope with the effects of the corona pandemic. There is a lot of disagreement between people on different sides of the political spectrum on how to best handle the crisis. The United States is especially polarized on the issue with Liberals and Conservatives having very different opinions on the topic. As shown in previous research, newspapers play an important role in forming public opinion and attitude. Often newspapers make use of figurative language such as metaphors in order to make their points stronger. Previous research has shown that newspapers regularly use war metaphors. However, no research seemed to exist that investigated potential differences between Liberal and Conservative newspapers regarding their use of war metaphors.