Metaphorizing the Discourse of Challenging Times

The pandemic has provided fertile ground for linguistic creativity (Salamurovic 2020). During the pandemic, metaphors and similes of all sorts were produced, and surely it did not come as a surprise that a new virus, causing illness and death, requiring urgent and radical responses from governments and citizens, would be talked about through metaphors. From its very beginning, the global understanding of the pandemic was a metaphorical one, as metaphor uses the better known to elucidate the less known. OT he pandemic has provided fertile ground for linguistic creativity (Salamurovic 2020). During the pandemic, metaphors and similes of all sorts were produced, and surely it did not come as a surprise that a new virus, causing illness and death, requiring urgent and radical responses from governments and citizens, would be talked about through metaphors. From its very beginning, the global understanding of the pandemic was a metaphorical one, as metaphor uses the better known to elucidate the less known. Many frames surrounding the pandemic were thought of as an alternative to the war rhetoric that, despite the ‘blanket criticism’ of being misleading and/or counterproductive, was the dominant, unavoidable and inescapable frame used to describe the extraordinary global pandemic that has affected the whole world. In this paper we look in particular at the originality of Jonathan Van-Tam who, with his straightforward, down-to-earth but no-nonsense communication style from the podium at No. 10 Downing Street, managed to creatively and clearly provide the British people with information about what was going on and what was at stake, never relying on negative nor worn-out frames.