Figurative discourse and the pandemic : a focus on the JOURNEY metaphor

Among the linguistic outcomes of the pandemic are the discourse strategies applied by speakers belonging to different sociolinguistic groups in different communicative contexts. In particular, the study highlights the widespread use in Italian of a densely figurative language, aimed at representing in an effective and cognitively manageable way the dramatic novelty of the phenomenon and the exceptionality of proposed measures (typically, on the part of institutions, politicians and the press), and at expressing the unique and emotionally charged nature of the new experience (typically, on the part of the ordinary speaker). Among different possible source domains, the study focuses on that of the journey, which appears to have been overlooked in the literature, though it constitutes, crosslinguistically, a fundamental resource for the representation of several aspects of human experience