Metaphorical Representation in Egyptian and American Multimodal Coronavirus Memes: A Cyberpragmatic Analysis

Abstract

This study investigates the potential socio-political commentaries entailed by the multimodal metaphorical conceptualizations in Egyptian and American coronavirus memes. A contrastive qualitative and quantitative analysis is carried out on 80 multimodal memes, retrieved from Facebook, in which Coronavirus is the target domain. The sample is composed of 40 Egyptian and 40 American Coronavirus Memes. The data are analyzed within the framework of Cyberpragmatics (Yus, 2019), the methodological tools of analysis of multimodal metaphorical approach (Forceville, 2008), and the tools of the compositional meaning of the visual and verbal semiotics (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006).  Five multimodal conceptual metaphors are identified, introducing different thematic representations which carry socio-political commentaries. The commentaries reflect varied universal and cultural-specific ideologies.