German Idioms Annotated by Source Domain and Context Descriptions: A Cognitive Corpus Dataset of Crisis Press Discourse

The projects investigates the role of idioms conceptualising power and control in the German-language press discourse concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, while empirically testing Kövecses’s (2020) four-level model of conceptual metaphor in the analysis of idiomatic expressions. The study draws on an 11-million-word corpus of press articles published between 2020 and 2021, from which 321 idioms were extracted for analysis. To explore their discursive functions, a mixed-methods approach was employed, combining (1) frequency analysis, (2) coding idioms according to the hierarchical structure proposed by Kövecses – image schema, domain, frame, mental space, and (3) contextual analysis. Results demonstrate a significant rise in pandemic-related idioms anchored in the FORCE AND CONTROL image schema, particularly within the MANUAL POSSESSION domain (e.g., etwas in den Griff bekommen). Such idioms conceptualise the relationship between “threat” and “counteracting entity”, serving diverse pragmatic purposes ranging from coercion reinforcement to solidarity-building. Kövecses’s multilevel framework proved effective in structuring the data, uncovering underlying metaphorisation patterns, yet indicated a necessity for refining and flexibly applying categories, as idioms frequently activate multiple image schemas simultaneously. Abstracting idioms to the image schema level creates a conceptual language beneficial for contrastive research, enabling cross-linguistic comparison of figurative conceptualisations of power in crisis contexts.

This work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland (grant number 2023/51/D/HS2/00232)