This thesis analyses the linguistic changes that occurred due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus of the analysis were conceptual metaphors detected in the articles published from October 2021 until March 2022 in the chosen English and Croatian media. The first aim of the analysis was to determine which conceptual metaphors occurred in the COVID-19 discourse. The second aim was to discover which types of conceptual metaphors were found most frequently. The third aim was to identify whether there are some similarities in their usage in the English and Croatian media. The first part of the thesis consists of the explanations of English as a lingua franca and its influence on Croatian, the role of English as a lingua franca during the COVID-19 pandemic, the explanations of public discourse and the role of media during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the definition of conceptual metaphors. The second part of the thesis provides the corpus-based analysis of conceptual metaphors found in the chosen articles. The analysis revealed that the most frequently detected type of conceptual metaphor was the WAR metaphor. There were also certain similarities in the usage of conceptual metaphors in the English and Croatian media, which suggests that speakers of both languages conceptualize the pandemic in a similar way.