A Study of American COVID-19 News from the Perspective of Ideational Grammatical Metaphor Theory—Taking New York Times as an Example

Covid-19 has exerted a significant impact on people’s life and health. Former coronavirus-related studies are mainly done through the lens of cognitive linguistics, especially Interpersonal Grammatical Metaphor Theory. This study focuses on the ideational grammatical metaphors in American coronavirus-related news, taking New York Times as the corpus for qualitative and quantitative analysis. The study combines the current issues concerning Covid-19 with Halliday’s Ideational Grammatical Metaphor Theory. It not only updates the application of the theory but also explores the ideology hidden behind words, helping identify the reporter’s potential purpose. It is found that the distribution of different types of ideational grammatical metaphors is shown by the proportion it takes in related news and is closely associated with their ideological functions. With Ideational Grammatical Theory serving as a media, the study offers a new perspective and approach for news report study.