Metaphor, Nominalization, Appraisal: Analyzing Coronavirus-Related Headlines and Subheadings in China Daily and The Wall Street Journal

This paper focuses on two corpora of headlines and subheadings from news articles about the coronavirus, published in China Daily (CD) The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) between January 7 February 8, 2020. Applying Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) Systemic Functional Linguistics, particularly nominalization framework (Halliday, 1997/2004) Appraisal (Martin White, 2005), explores how virus actions taken against it are framed through use metaphors, nominalizations, evaluative language general. Results highlight similarities metaphorical conceptualization virus/disease corpora, but also key differences terms framing. In , metaphor function to frame situation mainly positive terms; conversely, WSJ emerging outlook is predominantly pessimistic. conclusive section takes stock such differences, light socio-cultural contexts which they embedded. Finally, remarks made usefulness proposed theoretical methodological approach, main advantages being holistic perspective textual data combination analysis – as phenomena often work synergistically systematicity brought by integrating appraisal into studies. At contextual level, relevance findings lies their contribution a deeper understanding different national responses, media representation, at onset coronavirus crisis.