Hong Kong Protests (2019–2020): The Formation of the Police and Protesters Images in the Chinese Internet Discourse

Purpose. The study provides a linguocultural and cognitive analysis of the main metaphors representing the images of police and protesters in the Hong Kong protest context at the verbal level of text. The research is based on 305 comments on video clips on the BiliBili platform over the period from 2019 to 2020 selected by the method of continuous sampling. The authors use the cognitive-discursive method, which relies on discoveries in the field of metaphorical modelling and achievements in the field of discourse analysis. The obtained results may be of practical importance for researchers in the field of metaphorology, cognitive linguistics, and political linguistics.

Results. Despite the scarcity of explicit metaphors for the police, the conducted frame analysis has revealed 4 frames: actions of the police, attitudes towards the police, functions of the police, and interaction with the police. As for the protesters, 3 metaphorical models have been determined: PROTESTERS – ANIMATE WORLD, PROTESTERS – INANIMATE WORLD, PROTESTERS – SICKNESS.

Conclusion. The authors note that almost all of the metaphorical expressions tend to unanimously represent positive attitudes towards the police. However, metaphors regarding the protesters are absolutely different and are characterized by a multitude of negative metaphorical uses. In addition, the authors determine the dominant and the most frequent metaphorical models, and suggest possible causes of the entirely positive perception of the police during the period of social unrest.

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