Thinking pandemic societies through metaphor: Language, crisis and coronationalism in the post-Yugoslav area

Months into the Covid-19 pandemic, it is clear that global society is faced with an emergency of not only health, but of social mobilisationand communication, unfolding in paths we are only beginning to discern.

Emerging research suggests that the pandemic is bringing a major reframing of notions of collectivity and national belonging, where a figurative, metaphorical political rhetoric is paving ways to sweeping ‘coronationalisms’, across Europe.

Certainly timely and appropriate, the academic and citizen interest in language of thecrisis points to public discourse metaphoricity as a new challenge for crisis research globally.

By locating the analysis in the post-Yugoslav, post-socialist area, where persisting nationalist tensions mix with pandemic discourses in complex ways, this project lays the foundations for interdisciplinary, language-driven study of crisis discourse grounded in the role of metaphor for rooting perceptions of the past, present and future.

The project thus addresses objectives on two levels: (1) exploring the (re)framings of collectivity, national belonging and nationalism in the post-Yugoslav political, media and citizen discourses, and (2) introducing a multi-dimensional metaphorical methodological approach to public discourse analysis, bringing together cognitive-linguistic metaphor study and social science study of politics, history and cultural memory, as an adaptable interdisciplinary model suited to approaching discourses of crisis and social transformation.

The analyses, methodology and dedication to public debate together are expected to pave the way to rethinking effective crisis communication in this and other looming crises, by drawing on our pioneering insights on the conceptual role of language in mapping the real and symbolic borders and connections of (post-)pandemic Europe.