The concept of "pandemic" in modern English-language political discourse
Keywords:
pandemics, coronavirus, politics, discourse, political discourse.
Abstract
Real-life is closely linked to speech. How and what we communicate often speaks both about ourselves and about the conditions in which we find ourselves. The same applies to the situation around the coronavirus pandemic. One way or another, it influenced the way and the subject we talk about. In this article, we consider the measurement of speech changes under the influence of a pandemic on the example of the political discourse of English-speaking countries. Our goal was to find out how the coronavirus influenced political discourse and what specific examples can be used to demonstrate this. To carry out research, we used general and special scientific methods, in particular, content analysis, linguistic analysis. Among the sources, we have studied are scientific articles on the research topic, as well as materials of publications of the world's leading media on the research topic. As a result of this work, we concluded that the political discourse reflects the situation around the coronavirus in terms of the speaker and the goals he sets for himself. At the same time, for professional politicians, the pandemic has become a platform for a power struggle, so some of them openly manipulate information. One of the interesting areas of research is the means of communication in a crisis, in particular, the use of Internet memes to demonstrate their political position. This, as well as coronaviral neologisms, need further study.
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References
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Kelly, L. (2021). Pandemic clichés and how to avoid them. Readable. Recovered from https://readable.com/blog/pandemic-cliches-and-how-to-avoid-them/
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Ytre-Arne, B., & Moe, H. (2021). Doomscrolling, Monitoring and Avoiding: News Use in COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown. Journalism Studies, 1, 1-17. Recovered from https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2021.1952475
Bergs, A. (2018). Learn the Rules like a Pro, so you can Break them like an Artist (Picasso): Linguistic Aberrancy from a Constructional Perspective. Journal of English and American Studies, 66(3), 277-293. Recovered from https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2018-0025
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Distin, K. (2004). The Selfish Meme. Cambridge University Press.
Editor Group. (2021). The three COVID clichés it’s time to stop using. Recovered from https://www.editorgroup.com/blog/three-covid-cliches-its-time-to-stop-using/
Eyers, T. (2012). Lacan and the Concept of the “Real”. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Gans, H. (2004). Democracy and the News. New York: Oxford University Press
Garrison, J. (March 17, 2020). As coronavirus pandemic delays 2020 primaries, is it time to worry about the November election? USA Today. Recovered from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/03/17/coronavirus-pandemic-delays-primaries-time-worry-2020-november-election/5057930002/
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Guess, A., Nagler, J., & Tucker, J. (2019). Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook. Science Advances, 5(1), eaau4586. Recovered from https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586
Heathershaw, J., & Trechard, J. (2020). How to Hold an Election During a Pandemic. Pendemipolitics. Recovered from https://pandemipolitics.net/how-to-hold-an-election-during-a-pandemic/
Heimerl, F., Lohmann, S., Lange, S., & Ertl, T. (2014). Word cloud explorer: Text analytics based on word clouds. In 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 1833-1842). IEEE.
Iggers, J. (1999). Good News, Bad News. Journalism. Ethics and the Public Interest. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
Ilyas, A. (April 24, 2020). Covid-19 Pandemic: Emergence of a New Geopolitical Perspective. Sustainable Development Policy Institute. Recovered from http://hdl.handle.net/11540/11906
Kahl, C., & Wright, T. (2021). Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order. St. Martin's Press. Recovered from https://www.amazon.com/Aftershocks-Pandemic-Politics-International-Order/dp/1250275741
Kaser, O., & Lemire, D. (2007). Tag-cloud drawing: Algorithms for cloud visualization. arXiv preprint cs/0703109. Recovered from https://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0703109.pdf
Kelly, L. (2021). Pandemic clichés and how to avoid them. Readable. Recovered from https://readable.com/blog/pandemic-cliches-and-how-to-avoid-them/
Kessel, P., Baronavski, C., Scheller, A., & Smith, A. (March 5, 2021). In Their Own Words, Americans Describe the Struggles and Silver Linings of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Pew Research Center. Recovered from https://www.pewresearch.org/2021/03/05/in-their-own-words-americans-describe-the-struggles-and-silver-linings-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/
Kissinger, H. (2020). The coronavirus pandemic will forever alter the world order. The Wall Street Journal. WSJ Opinion. Recovered from https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coronavirus-pandemic-will-forever-alter-the-world-order-11585953005
Kozhukhov, М. (2020). The world will remain the same. Snob.ru. Recovered from https://snob.ru/profile/28509/blog/166147
Krishna, R. (2020). Here is the transcript of what Boris Johnson said on this morning about the new coronavirus. Full Fact. Recovered from https://fullfact.org/health/boris-johnson-coronavirus-this-morning/
Landman, T., & Splendore, L. (2020). Pandemic democracy: elections and COVID-19. Journal of Risk Research, 23(7-8), 1060-1066. Recovered from https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2020.1765003
Lerer, L., & Epstein, R.J. (2020). How the Coronavirus Changed the 2020 Campaign. The New York Times. Recovered from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/us/politics/coronavirus-2020-campaign.html
Mehta, C. (2006). US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud. Chirag Mehta. Recovered from https://chir.ag/projects/preztags/
Merkeley, E., Bridgman, A., Loewen, P.J., Owen, T., Ruths, D., & Zhilin, O. (2020). A rare moment of cross-partisan consensus: Elite and public response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 53(2), 311-318. Recovered from https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423920000311
Merriam-Webster. (2020). A Guide to Coronavirus-Related Words. Recovered from https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/coronavirus-words-guide/covid-19
Motta, M., Stecula, D., & Farhart, C. (2020). How right-leaning media coverage of COVID-19 facilitated the spread of misinformation in the early stages of the pandemic in the US. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 53(2), 335-342. Recovered from https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423920000396
Newman, N. (2017). Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Osmundsen, M., Bor, A., Vahlstrup, P., Bechmann, A., & Petersen, M. (2021). Partisan Polarization Is the Primary Psychological Motivation behind Political Fake News Sharing on Twitter. American Political Science Review, 115(3), 999-1015. doi: 10.1017/S0003055421000290
Owen, L.H. (2020). Older people and Republicans are most likely to share Covid-19 stories from fake news sites on Twitter. NiemanLab. Recovered from https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/10/older-people-and-republicans-are-most-likely-to-share-covid-19-stories-from-fake-news-sites-on-twitter/
Pickup, M., Stecula, D., & Van Der Linden, C. (2020). Novel coronavirus, old partisanship: COVID-19 attitudes and behaviours in the United States and Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 53(2), 357-364. Recovered from https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423920000463
Seattle Times. (2021). From ‘anti-masker’ to ‘Zooming’: Words and phrases that have become part of our COVID-19 vocabulary. Recovered from https://www.seattletimes.com/life/from-anti-masker-to-zooming-words-and-phrases-that-have-become-part-of-our-covid-19-vocabulary/
Shifman, L. (2014). Memes. MIT Press.
Steblyna, N.O. (2020). COVID-19 and the transformation of Ukraine's digital political discourse in 2020. Political Life, 2, 103-110. Recovered from https://jpl.donnu.edu.ua/article/view/8850
Stecula, D. (2020). What do we know about misinformation during the coronavirus outbreak? Mischiefs of Faction. Recovered from https://www.mischiefsoffaction.com/post/what-do-we-know-about-misinformation-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak
Stecula, D.., & Pickup, M. (2021). How populism and conservative media fuel conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 and what it means for COVID-19 behaviors. Research & Politics, 8(1), 2053168021993979. Recovered from https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2053168021993979
Thompson, M. (2016). Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics? New York: St. Martin's Press. Recovered from https://www.amazon.com/Enough-Said-Whats-Language-Politics/dp/1250059577
Tiratelli, L., & Kaye, S. (2020). Communities vs. Coronavirus. The Rise of Mutual Aid. New Local Government Network. New Local. Recovered from http://newlocal.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Communities-vs-Coronavirus_New-Local.pdf
UKRLIFE.TV. (July 1, 2020). Politics has become a supermarket – Andrey Baumeister [Video]. YouTube. Recovered from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_5tOYjIXfg
Valensise, C.M., Serra, A., Galeazzi, A. et al. (2021). Entropy and complexity unveil the landscape of memes evolution. Scientific Reports, 11, 20-22. Recovered from https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99468-6
Van Dijk, T.A. (2008). Discourse and power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Recovered from https://www.worldcat.org/title/discourse-and-power/oclc/244660683
Ytre-Arne, B., & Moe, H. (2021). Doomscrolling, Monitoring and Avoiding: News Use in COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown. Journalism Studies, 1, 1-17. Recovered from https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2021.1952475
Published
2021-11-25
How to Cite
Shkvorchenko, N., Hromovenko, V., & Sharapanovska, Y. (2021). The concept of "pandemic" in modern English-language political discourse. Amazonia Investiga, 10(46), 225-233. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2021.46.10.23
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