ELF-mediated modal metaphors of ‘inclusion’, ‘exclusion’ and ‘seclusion’ in an online discussion on Covid-19 fake news: A case study in cross-cultural Cognitive Linguistics

This paper introduces a case study in cross-cultural Cognitive Linguistics focused on the variable use of English modal verbs conveying new Covid-triggered experiential metaphors conceived by a focus group of multicultural participants in online discussion. The group was composed of Italians, Greeks and migrants from Nigeria, Morocco and Yemen, all non-native speakers of English – a language that they used as a ‘lingua franca’ (ELF) while participating in the intercultural interaction taking place in the computer- mediated dimension of a virtual university classroom. The case study intended to determine whether the group’s pragmatic use of modals introducing novel metaphors actually diverged from habitual high/low- context schemata related to the multicultural participants’ different native sociolinguistic communities. Schema divergence was assumed to be prompted by the particular ‘emotion-raising’ topic chosen for the case study – namely, the probable fake news on the causes of the Covid-19 pandemic, as they were conveyed by three journalistic texts submitted for discussion. More specifically, the case study explored the new cognitive metaphors of ‘inclusion’, ‘exclusion’, and ‘seclusion’ developed by the participants in relation to their social and psychological involvement with the topic – which eventually developed further to encompass the positive and negative consequences of pandemic, including the obligation to stay at home and communicate exclusively online, with the related issues of gender and ethnic discrimination, or rather empowerment. What stands out in this case study is that the more the participants were emotionally involved in such a topic, the more markedly their specific ELF variations emerged in the discussion. This is assumed to be due to the fact that the participants unconsciously perceived such ELF variations as more spontaneous and familiar for the immediate expression of their emotions and opinions, insofar as these variations have developed from the natural transfer of their native-language structures into the non-native English language they used. Indeed, precisely these ELF variations allowed the conveyance of the new metaphors for the expression of the participants’ unprecedented experience of forced lockdown and online communication through the so-called ‘metaverse’ replacing reality. In such a virtual context, the participants in the online debate who were migrants from the high-context cultures of Nigeria, Morocco, and Yemen unexpectedly developed novel low-context epistemic metaphors of ‘inclusion’ triggered by their sense of a possible freedom from their native social constraints granted by remote communication mode without the use of video, which would conceal their ethnic and socio-cultural features. On the contrary, participants from the middle/high-context cultures of the Southern European countries of Italy and Greece showed a strengthening of the stereotypical high-context deontic metaphors imposing ‘exclusion’ and ‘seclusion’.