Abs­tract

What do me­mo­ries, rain­coats and snakes have in com­mon? They have all been used as me­ta­phors for va­c­ci­nes by peop­le with dif­fe­rent views and com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ve goals.

This talk is con­cer­ned with how, why and with what po­ten­ti­al con­se­quen­ces me­ta­phors are used to com­mu­ni­ca­te about va­c­ci­nes by dif­fe­rent peop­le in dif­fe­rent con­texts, in­clu­ding po­pu­lar sci­ence books, pu­blic health cam­paigns, and pod­casts by ce­le­bri­ty anti-​vaxxers. It shows how dif­fe­rent me­ta­phors are used to achie­ve dif­fe­rent com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ve goals, from ex­plai­ning how rapidly-​developed va­c­ci­nes are safe, to sug­ges­ting that va­c­ci­nes are part of a large-​scale con­spi­ra­cy at the ex­pen­se of or­di­na­ry peop­le.

Both op­por­tu­nities and chal­len­ges arise from a con­side­ra­ti­on of these pat­terns in me­ta­phor use and an app­rai­sal of the world in the mid-​2020s (e.g. a va­c­ci­ne he­si­tant go­vernment in the USA). First, me­ta­phors can be one of the tools to be de­ploy­ed to ad­dress the loss of con­fi­dence in va­c­ci­nes cau­sed by the pandemic-​related ex­pe­ri­ence of being re­pea­ted­ly in­fec­ted by a virus after one or sever­al va­c­ci­na­ti­ons. Se­cond, pro-​vaccination me­ta­phors by sci­en­tists and pu­blic health agen­ci­es tend to be clear and ac­ces­si­ble but do not usual­ly match the high emo­tio­nal va­lence of anti-​vaccination me­ta­phors, nor the way in which anti-​vaccination me­ta­phors fit into a broa­der ter­ri­fy­ing nar­ra­ti­ve of which va­c­ci­nes are a part. An awa­ren­ess of this mis­match may be hel­pful in craf­ting me­ta­pho­ri­cal and non-​metaphorical fu­ture pu­blic health messa­ges about va­c­ci­na­ti­ons.

Bio

Elena Se­mi­no is a Dis­tin­guis­hed Pro­fes­sor in the De­part­ment of Lin­gu­is­tics and Eng­lish Lan­guage at Lan­cas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty. She is the di­rec­tor of the ESRC Cent­re for Cor­pus Ap­proa­ches to So­cial Sci­en­ces, as well as a mem­ber and cur­rent lead of the In­ter­na­tio­nal Con­sor­ti­um for Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on in Health Care. Her re­se­arch in­te­rests are in health com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on, me­di­cal hu­ma­nities, sty­listics, and me­ta­phor theo­ry and ana­ly­sis. Her work com­bi­nes qua­li­ta­ti­ve ana­ly­sis with cor­pus lin­gu­is­tic me­thods. One of the many pro­jects she is cur­r­ent­ly in­vol­ved with is the ESRC-​funded pro­ject Ques­tio­ning Va­c­ci­na­ti­on Dis­cour­se: A Corpus-​based Study, ap­p­ly­ing lin­gu­is­tic me­thods to bet­ter un­der­stand pro- and anti-​vaccination views.