The research aimed to explore the metaphorical patterns characterizing political communication in Hungarian-language social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, it sheds light on how metaphors contribute to the emotion-regulating nature of political discourse.

We sought to answer the first research question by creating and annotating a small-scale research corpus. We selected posts shared on Facebook between March and December 2020 by two prominent figures in Hungarian political life, Viktor Orbán and Ferenc Gyurcsány. The corpus thus provides insight into the communications of the government and the opposition during the period under investigation. The entire research corpus consists of 7,323 words, of which we performed metaphor analysis on 25% (1,858 words, randomly sampled from the original corpus). The annotation was performed by six professional annotators, who individually analyzed equal-sized parts of the sample. Annotation took place on the WebAnno online collaborative annotation platform, resulting in a total of 454 metaphorical expressions being tagged. The research examined how often metaphors appear in the posts of two politicians, as well as the distribution of metaphor categories and grammatical features within the corpus. The research examined the frequency with which metaphors appear in the posts of the two politicians, as well as the distribution of metaphor categories and grammatical features within the corpus.

Based on the previous literature, we examined the relationship between emotion regulation and metaphor creativity. To observe such a relationship, we also gathered data on users’ evaluations of metaphors in the corpus through a questionnaire-based survey. The respondents first rated the 12 text excerpts (selected from the corpus) on a scale of emotional intensity. Then, they could also specify the emotions they experienced in connection with the example. Finally, we asked them which expressions triggered the emotions they indicated.

One conclusion that can be drawn from the research is that emotional intensity correlates (although not linearly or automatically) with the processing of metaphorical expressions, which suggests that metaphors play a role in regulating emotions in political communication. The polarity of the emotions experienced is divided between pro-government and opposition posts. The creativity and linguistic sophistication of metaphors also influence the intensity of the emotions experienced.

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• Simon, Gábor – Árvay, Kata – Bajzát, Tímea Borbála – K. Molnár, Emese – Prótár, Noémi – Szlávich, Eszter: Metaforikus kreativitás és érzelemszabályozás - Metaforamintázatok a közösségi médiában járvány idején. [Metaphorical creativity and emotion regulation - Metaphor patterns in social media during a pandemic] In: Szabó, Gabriella (ed.): Érzelmek és járványpolitizálás. Politikai érzelemmenedzserek és érzelemszabályozási ajánlataik Magyarországon a COVID-19-pandémia idején. [Emotions and pandemic politics. Political emotion managers and their emotion regulation recommendations in Hungary during the COVID-19 pandemic] Budapest: ELKH Társadalomtudományi Kutatóközpont. 2022: 82-111.