‘Bubbles’, ‘Cocoons’, the ‘Protective Ring’ and the ‘Petri Dish’: The Containment Frame and the Pandemic

Abstract

Containment and confinement as embodied experience contributed to many metaphors that characterized public discussion and policy formation during the pandemic. Chapter 7 identifies a contrast between containers such as ‘bubbles’, ‘cocoons’, and ‘protective rings’ that attribute value to what is contained and those such as ‘petri dishes’ and ‘pockets’ that place negative value on what is contained. I describe the covert moral coercion implied by the ‘cocoon’ metaphor and the lack of substance in the ‘bubble’ metaphor, as well as its tendency to ‘burst’. The ‘petri dish’ metaphor evaluated the intentions and purposes of the agent that put the entity into the container in a powerfully negative way. Containment metaphors share a diverse range of semantic evaluations and make strong appeals to the moral frames of Care and Harm, Loyalty and Betrayal, Fairness and Cheating, Sanctity and Degradation.