“Snake flu,” “killer bug,” and “Chinese virus”: A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of lexical choices in early UK press coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Now mostly known as “COVID-19” (or simply “Covid”), early discourse around the pandemic was characterized by a particularly large variation in naming choices (ranging from “new coronavirus” and “new respiratory disease” to “killer bug” and the racist term “Chinese virus”). The current study is situated within corpus-assisted discourse studies and analyses these naming choices in UK newspaper coverage (January–March 2020), focusing on terminology deemed “inappropriate” as per WHO guidelines on naming infectious diseases. The results show that 9% of all terms referring to COVID-19 or the virus causing it are “inappropriate” overall, with “inappropriate” naming being more prevalent (1) in tabloids than broadsheets and (2) in the period before compared to the period after the virus was officially named on 11th February, 2020. Selected examples within each of the categories of “inappropriate” names are explored in more detail [terms (1) inciting undue fear, (2) containing geographic locations, and (3) containing species of animals], and the findings are discussed with regard to the contribution of lexical choices to the reproduction of (racist and otherwise problematic) ideologies in mainstream media.

Commentary: How to have agency in a pandemic

“…One of the most powerful ways that language (re)frames people's understanding and experience of agency is in the use of metaphor. Metaphorical language was so pervasive during the pandemic that it is touched upon, at least implicitly, in every one of these articles, Bafort et al ( 2023 ), for instance, talking about how journalists discredited government responses to COVID by comparing them to failed responses to terrorist attacks, Kania ( 2022 ) discussing how different “inappropriate” names for the virus connected it to different domains of experience (e.g., animals and geography), and Banga and Bellinzona ( 2023 ) describing some of the visual metaphors that featured in the linguistic landscape of Italy during lockdowns. It is in the papers by Giorgis et al and Wilding et al, however, that metaphorical language is taken up most explicitly and directly linked to issues of power, control and agency.…”

“…This interactional dimension of agency is seen in the ways the journalists in Kania's ( 2022 ) study formulate their naming practices in dialogue both with the norms established by the WHO and the practices of other journalists and politicians. It can be seen in the way the diarists in the study by Robinson et al negotiate the limits of their physical environments, the dynamics of their workplaces, and their relationships with friends in order to get things done.…”

“…One thinks, for example, of the dramatic ways the participants in the study by Wilding et al describe their emotions as seemingly independent entities that seem to “creep up on them” and pull them in different directions, or of the complex and sometimes contradictory emotions the diarists in Robinson et al express about regulations, or of the way the international students in Cowie et al “feel” the city of Edinburgh differently during lockdown. One also thinks of the way affect can be deployed by others to undermine agency by generating fear or hatred, such as when metaphors of war or labels such as “China virus” become prominent features of the discursive environment (Kania, 2022 ; Giorgis et al, 2023 ).…”

“…Robinson et al ( 2023 ), for example, examine how agency the loss of agency was lexically and grammatically encoded in the way people talked about regulation; Wilding et al ( 2023 ) show how older adults in isolation negotiated their loss of agency through their use of metaphors, and Cowie et al ( 2022 ) describe the ways people coped with the disrupted relationship between structure and agency that came from forced immobility through the production of chronotopic discourse. In others, attention to the issue of agency is more implicit, though no less central, Tragel and Pikksaar ( 2022 ), for instance, focusing on how relationships of authority and solidarity were constructed in regulatory discourses about mask wearing, Bafort et al ( 2023 ) addressing mediatized debates about personal freedom and privacy associated with COVID-19 telephone contact tracing, Kania ( 2022 ) discussing how practices of naming COVID-19 in media discourse revealed underlying ideological projects to assign responsibility for the pandemic to radicalized others, Giorgis et al ( 2023 ) documenting the ways metaphors of warfare used by the governments functioned both as calls to action and constraints on agency in different countries, and Banga and Bellinzona ( 2023 ) exploring how municipal spaces became arenas in which negotiations among regulatory and transgressive discourses played out. In all of these treatments of the pandemic, discourse is presented as the primary means through which agency was claimed and constrained, power was exercised and resisted, and responsibility was assigned and denied.…”

Introducing the keyconcept approach to the analysis of language: the case of regulation in COVID-19 diaries

“…The language used during the COVID-19 era can provide insight into these profound and far-reaching changes that resulted from the pandemic directly or indirectly. Linguistic research has explored public health messaging from the government and related agencies (e.g., Kalocsányiová et al, 2021 ; Strange, 2022 ) and the media (Jaworska, 2021 ; Müller et al, 2021 ; Semino, 2021 ; Yu et al, 2021 ; Kania, 2022 ; Bafort et al, 2023 ; Giorgis et al, 2023 ). A number of studies analyse COVID-19 signage communication, such as Tragel and Pikksaar ( 2022 ) and Bagna and Bellinzona ( 2023 ).…”