Unmasking Metaphors of Covid-19 Pandemic on Citizen TV’s Twitter Handle in Kenya: A Cognitive Linguistic Approach
| dc.contributor.author | Nzomo, Nancy Mwikali | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-07-30T06:45:42Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-07-30T06:45:42Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025-05 | |
| dc.description | A Research Project Submitted to the School of Law, Arts and Social Sciences in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of Degree of Master of Arts (English & Linguistics) of Kenyatta University, May 2025. Supervisor Mwangi Gachara | |
| dc.description.abstract | The outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019, led to the emergence of metaphorical framing. Life almost came to a standstill for more than two years. As a result, the entire world was engaged in combat with an elusive enemy that was widely seen as a warning sign. The study explored the metaphors employed in the fight against the virus in Kenya when it became a public health concern. Since this pandemic was the first in a century, people came up with new vocabulary and mental analogies to describe it. The study was guided by the following objectives; Identifying and categorizing COVID-19 metaphors, analyzing the conceptual structure of COVID-19 metaphors, and finally describing the metaphorical micro domains informing the macro domains of COVID-19 metaphors. The conceptual Metaphor Theory (1980/2003) was used in the study. The research used both primary and secondary data. The secondary data obtained from the Citizen TV Twitter handle was subjected to the Metaphor Identification Procedure developed by scholars at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (MIPVU). The criteria identifies the metaphorically used linguistic items. The identified metaphors were classified into their domain following source-target domain analysis. The corpus was then used to determine the micro domains of each conceptual metaphor. Online questionnaires through a link were sent to WhatsApp groups for the primary data which was used to determine the conceptual structure of the COVID-19 metaphor. The study utilized the qualitative research design. The findings and analysis of the research were presented using tables followed by descriptions of the objectives to show how COVID-19 was conceptualized in Kenya. The key findings reveal the prevalence of WAR metaphors, PATH metaphor and ORGANISM metaphor. The study recommends that public health communication strategies should be mindful of the potential impacts of such metaphors on public perception and behavior. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://ir-library.ku.ac.ke/handle/123456789/30931 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Kenyatta University | |
| dc.title | Unmasking Metaphors of Covid-19 Pandemic on Citizen TV’s Twitter Handle in Kenya: A Cognitive Linguistic Approach | |
| dc.type | Thesis |