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Metaphors and Vaccines: Opportunities and Challenges
followed by drinks reception
Speaker: Elena Semino (Linguistics, Lancaster University)
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.
Respondent: Samantha Vanderslott (Social Sciences, University of Oxford)
Date:
11 March 2025, 17:15
Venue:
St Cross College, St Giles OX1 3LZ
Venue Details:
Seminar Room
Speakers:
Professor Elena Semino (Lancaster),
Dr Samantha Vanderslott (University of Oxford)
Organising department:
St Cross College
Organiser:
Dr Alberto Giubilini
Organiser contact email address:
alberto.giubilini@uehiro.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
Public Health Humanities at St Cross
Booking required?:
Required
Booking url:
https://www.stx.ox.ac.uk/event/metaphors-and-vaccines-opportunities-and-challenges
Cost:
free
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Alberto Giubilini
