Les métaphores no-vax sur Twitter. Une étude comparative français-italien

The aim of this research is to study metaphors related to the topic of anti-vaccination used by users in digital communication, especially on Twitter[1]. We created a bilingual comparable corpus in French and Italian based on a collection of tweets characterised by no-vax metaphors that were published online between March 2020 and October 2022. The qualitative analysis of the tweets considered shows the use of a variety of metaphors in order to emphasise two different positions taken by users on Twitter: on the one hand, the conspiracy, the fight for freedom, sacrifice, being victims of a health system that forces people to be vaccinated, resistance against the health dictatorship and against the restrictions imposed by the government; on the other hand, the free choice to be vaccinated, the fight against the virus and against the circulation of fake news. This study shows the role of metaphors, which are used to insult or denigrate, as well as to defend and support one's own position in relation to the vaccination against the Covid-19 virus.