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Вестник Томского государственного университета. Филология. 2023. № 84. С. 96-105 Tomsk State University Journal of Philology. 2023. 84. рр. 96-105
Original article
UDC 811.161.1'42:616-036.21:070:004.77 doi: 10.17223/19986645/84/5
Pragmatics of the coronavirus discourse (based on internet news articles about coronavirus)
Iryna A. Khorsun1, Oksana N. Chalova2
12 Francisk Skorina Gomel State University, Gomel, Republic of Belarus 1 ihorsun@gsu.by 2 oksana-chalova@mail.ru
Abstract. The article considers the problem of pragmatic characteristics of the COVID-19 discourse. It reveals and characterizes the main strategies and tactics of this type of communication. The lack of attention to the coronavirus discourse shown by linguists must be explained by an absolute novelty of this communicative and social phenomenon, its recent introduction into our communicative world. Just a few works on the problems of coronavirus communication can be found in linguistics and other social sciences. They sporadically concentrate on some issues concerning the coronavirus discourse without providing its overall pragmalinguistic or any other structure. Therefore, the relevance of our research aiming at finding and characterizing the communicative strategies and tactics of the coronavirus discourse is beyond argument. While the term "speech/communicative strategy" implies a person's or people's overall communicative behavior intended to achieve some goal, a speech tactic involves a particular technique used to achieve a certain goal. The object of our analysis is internet news articles about coronavirus (top news feeds in most popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing, AltaVista, etc.). Our choice of the object is predetermined by the highest degree of popularity of internet news articles among the population as well as their high pragmatic potential. The article shows that the system of strategies and tactics depends on a particular type of the COVID-19 discourse (statistical, socially oriented, and popular science discourse). Thus, the statistical discourse is characterized by just a few tactics (the generalizing tactics, the specifying tactics, etc.) which represent the strategy of fast reporting. The popular science discourse with its leading strategy of education is not exuberant in tactics either. This type of discourse is characterized by the tactics of presentation, argumentation, definition, etc. as there is no need to use a lot of tactical techniques to popularize objective knowledge. The only type of the COVID-19 discourse which has developed a well-disposed system of tactics is the socially oriented discourse (the tactics of showing care, shocking by statistics, direct recommendation, positive or negative forecasting, etc.), which is predetermined by the specific character of its main strategy of persuasion. A combination of several tactics in one context is a common feature of any type of the COVID-19 discourse.
Keywords: discourse, coronavirus, strategy, tactics, persuasion, pragmalinguistics
For citation: Khorsun, I.A. & Chalova, O.N. (2023) Pragmatics of the coronavirus discourse (based on internet news articles about coronavirus). Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filologiya - Tomsk State University Journal of Philology. 84. рр. 96-105. doi: 10.17223/19986645/84/5
© Khorsun I.A., Chalova O.N., 2023
Whenever a new form of communication appears in some field of human activity, it immediately makes an object of linguistic analysis. Thus, modern linguistics focuses on such types of communication as videoconference communication, discourse of bloggers, fashion discourse, beauty discourse, cookery discourse, Brexit discourse, TED Talk discourse, discourse of immigrants [1-5], etc.
However, one very popular type of discourse - the COVID-19 discourse - is still a blind spot in modern linguistics. The COVID-19 (coronavirus) discourse can be defined as any speech (official reports, everyday dialogues, etc.) about coronavirus. This lack of attention to the coronavirus discourse shown by linguists must be explained by an absolute novelty of this communicative and social phenomenon, its recent introduction into our communicative world. Just a few works on problems of a coronavirus communication can be found in linguistics and other social sciences [6-12]. One of the most fundamental linguistic works [9] studies the lexical aspects of the coronavirus discourse (mainly Russian, but also Czech, Polish, English, German, etc.), in particular coronavirus neologisms and their derivational potential as well as common and individual metaphors that appeared in the time of coronavirus. This research also identifies the place of the coronavirus vocabulary in the system of modern paremiology. The tendency of the coronavirus lexicon internalization and the tendency of vocabulary contamination have been stated and justified [9; 10]. The results of the studies of the Russian coronavirus vocabulary have been reflected in a voluminous dictionary [11]. As one can clearly see, modern linguistic sources are chiefly about the lexical issues of the coronavirus communication. As for the other aspects of the coronavirus discourse, they are still to be investigated. Thus, we have found just one work on problems of syntax of the coronavirus communication [12], and no works about its overall pragmalinguistic structure.
Meanwhile, it is very important to study pragmatic aspects of the coronavirus discourse because knowledge of the functional aspects of the coronavirus communication can help us reveal and clarify people's attitude (which is definitely negative) toward the virus and the disease it can cause, and better understand the nature of the persuasive, informational and affective discourse.
Therefore, the relevance of our research aiming at finding and characterizing the communicative strategies and tactics of the coronavirus discourse is beyond argument. While the term "speech/communicative strategy" implies a person's or people's overall communicative behavior intended to achieve some goal, a speech tactic involves a particular technique used to achieve a certain goal.
Quite a number of authors have been interested in defining and describing the system of speech strategies and tactics, but mainly of political discourse [1315]. For instance, the electoral discourse has been found to focus on developing the strategy of persuasion (to persuade the public to vote for a particular candidate) through using tactics like promising, positive self-presentation, criticizing the opponent, complement, allusion, joke, etc. [13-15]. Despite their merits, linguists have never managed to find a universal strategic and tactical repertoire that can be applied to different types of discourse, including the coronavirus communication, because it seems simply impossible: there is no and can hardly
ever be such a thing as a typical set of communicative tactics relevant to all varieties of institutional or non-institutional discourses. All of the aforesaid dictates the need for analyzing each type of modern communication individually. The coronavirus discourse is no exception. Thus, this research is timely.
The object of our analysis is internet news articles about coronavirus (top news feeds in most popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing, AltaVista, etc.). Our choice of the object is predetermined by the highest degree of popularity of internet news articles among the population as well as their high pragmatic potential. The main research method used is the method of contextual analysis, which is the basic way to achieve results in pragmatic linguistics. The method of contextual analysis suggests identification, sorting, systematization, and interpretation of linguistic data (in our case, strategies and tactics) found in a particular context (news about coronavirus) in order to understand the aspects of their functioning. As is known, this interpretation can be of a probabilistic character, but only up to a point.
Our observations show that internet English-language articles about corona-virus published as official news can be divided into three main types, each of which is characterized by its own set of communicative strategies and tactics: statistical discourse, socially oriented (socially beneficial) discourse, and popular science discourse. Below is the description of the system of their communicative strategies and tactics.
1. Statistical discourse
The statistical coronavirus discourse is represented by reports about infection cases, the number of the diseased and those recovered from the disease, which means that this subtype of the coronavirus discourse is of registration character and aims at transmitting breaking news about coronavirus: The weekly rolling average for cases in the United States has nearly tripled in the last month. The pace of deaths also is up sharply - 24.7% from its low point two weeks ago; At least 1,025,826 people in North Carolina have tested positive for the coronavirus, and at least 13,535 have died since March 2020, according to state health officials.
The leading communicative strategy of the statistical discourse is the strategy of fast reporting (immediate and intensive broadcasting of information), which is manifested through the use of the following tactics in the discourse under study: the generalizing tactic (ignoring particular and definite coronavirus cases and summarizing the information), the tactic of time and space saving (linguistics text compression involving ignoring excessive language elements like synonyms, epithets, metaphors, etc.), the tactic of specification (providing quantitative data, naming the exact date, country/state/city that the quantitative data refer to, etc.) and the like.
2. Socially oriented (socially beneficial) discourse
The socially beneficial discourse contains messages about restrictive and protection measures that can save human lives during the pandemic (about positives of vaccination, social distance, lockdowns, wearing safety facemasks, and so on). In other words, the aim of these articles is to encourage people to observe safety measures. Thus, the leading strategy of the socially oriented discourse is the persua-
sion strategy (the imperative strategy) that is revealed through a number of tactics most of which appeal to the feeling of fear of severe disease and death. Below you can see the tactics that make the persuasion strategy in the coronavirus discourse.
The tactic of shocking by statistics implies providing a great number of statistical data, quoting impressive figures that show the complexity of the epide-miological situation or the highly probable difficulties that one can encounter in a professional or any other sphere in the event the anti-coronavirus measures are not taken. (The U.K. recorded more than 50,000 new cases in a day for the first time in six months; For 1,000 cases detected, the English variant causes 4.1 deaths, against 2.5 for the classic coronavirus, it found).
The tactic of showing care can be found in news articles about the basic and extra measures that the authorities have taken for the nation to be safe and secure: Costco Wholesale will continue to hold special operating hours for members 60 and older and vulnerable shoppers while the coronavirus pandemic continues; On March 2, the president pledged enough vaccine for every adult in the USA by May, thanks to a deal brokered between pharmaceutical giants Merck and Johnson & Johnson; Health workers aren 't "throwing the kitchen sink" at patients anymore. They use ventilators more judiciously, finding that delivering oxygen to the throat rather than forcing air into the lungs with a ventilator can be safer and more effective for all but sickest patients. And doctors have one good tool to prevent death - the steroid dexamethasone - which is cheap, effective and easy to use.
The tactic of direct recommendations is about giving direct advice and offering good things to people, thus stimulating people to keep up to safety regulations and norms. Such texts are characterized by deontic modality that is revealed through the following linguistics means: modal verbs of necessity and obligation, imperative forms, words of recommendation, etc.: Do not travel. U.S. citizens should avoid travel to the United Kingdom because of a spike in coronavirus cases, two government agencies said Monday; The academy also "strongly recommends" in-person learning and urges all who are eligible be vaccinated to protect against COVID-19; With the delta variant surging in the United States, doctors are urging everyone who is eligible to get vaccinated -including the more than 30 million people who have already had COVID-19.
The tactic of a positive forecast is represented through appealing to benefits of protection measures, providing assurances of the guaranteed positive impact of safety measures and stressing the positives of some actions: Vaccines are still offering significant protection against serious illness and death, including against the Delta variant.
The tactic of a negative forecast is used to show possible disastrous consequences of ignoring precautions: "We only have two choices, we are either going to get vaccinated and end the pandemic or we are going to accept death, a lot of it, this surge and another surge and possibly another variant, " infectious disease specialist Dr. Catherine O'Neal said during a state COVID-19 press briefing Friday. This negative forecast is usually of general character, which means that it is not about a particular person, but is mainly everyone's concern.
Very close to the tactics of positive and negative forecasts is the tactic of comparison which highlights similarities and differences, positives and negatives of two types of human conduct against the background of coronavirus -conduct fostering the spread of coronavirus and conduct slowing down the spread of the infection: Not only is getting a vaccine far safer than being infected with the COVID-19 virus, but studies also show that vaccine-induced immunity may be superior to post-infection immunity. In fact, a recent study published in Science Translational Medicine demonstrated that antibodies induced by the vaccine may better combat a wider range of new viral variants when compared to antibodies induced by infection; <E>ven if the vaccine does cause GBS in a tiny fraction of recipients, the odds of getting GBS are much greater if you don't get vaccinated, because it makes you more likely to get flu, and to get GBS secondary to your flu infection," he said. As is evident from the given text fragments, comparison is made in favor of anti-coronavirus behavior.
The tactic of appealing to common sense is manifested through giving proofs for the significance of social restraints, via justifying the use of protective means, introduction of lockdowns as well as through patiently explaining some details, risks and consequences of particular actions: "Because of the current situation in the United Kingdom, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants," the CDC said in its update; The procedure for getting a COVID-19 vaccine is similar to a regular vaccine, such as an influenza shot. The difference is health professionals will keep you there for 15 to 30 minutes after to monitor you for any serious adverse effects; Traveling on public transportation increases a person's risk of getting and spreading COVID-19 by bringing people in close contact with others, often for prolonged periods, and exposing them to frequently touched surfaces.
The illustrative (exemplifying) tactic reveals itself through providing true-life examples showing all the danger and severity of the infection and the gravity of the situation. Therefore, this tactics can also be referred to as the tactic of appealing to people's positive/negative experience: Last week, an Arkansas mother who had avoided getting herself and her 13-year-old daughter vaccinated said she wished that she "would've made better choices for her" after her daughter was hospitalized with covid-19. She said that misinformation had stopped her from getting vaccinated; Hamdan fell ill in November. He spent five weeks at the hospital and thought he'd be released. But his health quickly deteriorated in a 24-hour-stretch, and he died Dec. 30. He is one of almost 25,000 New Jersey residents who died of COVID-19. As one can clearly see from the examples above, news articles about coronavirus, though focused on fast reporting, are of dramatic character and full of tension. It is mentioning real people and the form of narration which produce this right effect that COVID-19 can affect everyone and the infection can be terrible in its consequences; "Before this, I was singing, dancing and just running around the place. Now I can't really do that so it's very different, " she said. In other words, journalists strive for personalizing the news, focusing on individuals, their sufferings and conflicts.
The tactic of dramatizing a story can be used not only in combination with the illustrative tactics but also solely or with some other tactics. Dramatizing is delivering information in such a way that it becomes compelling. Presenting news just for the sake of news is not sufficient to encourage the public. So, journalists focus on the dramatic aspects of the event through emphasizing a human struggle with the infection, people's emotional state, thus making a story of tragedy and heroism: Far fewer people are dying from COVID-19 today than in January, but more than 1,000 Americans die from the disease every day -alone at home or in hospitals, gasping for air, suffering heart attacks or slipping silently away. In the given news fragment, the tactic of dramatization is combined with the tactic of shocking by statistics. The dramatic narrative which concentrates on the details of the situation and implies a lot of tension (often through the use of metaphors and other stylistic means: gasping for air, slipping away, etc.) should be differentiated from the tactic of a negative forecast (analyzed above) which is only a statement of prediction about the future.
The tactic of discredit aims at criticizing, disapproving (in a direct or implicit manner) the behavior of people neglecting safety regulations or norms or even accusing individuals whose actions can be harmful for the well-being of others. The tactic is not of wide use in news articles due to the code of ethics. Nevertheless, it still can be found in the socially oriented coronavirus discourse and focuses on lowering (at least indirectly and implicitly) the status of those refusing to observe protective measures, shifting all the responsibility for the situation in which we have found ourselves onto them, presenting them in an unfavorable way. It does not mean that the reporter strives to show the negative traits and intentions of people like those. Moreover, the journalist does not usually use vocabulary with a negative evaluative meaning. However, such accusations are tailored to sound grave and oppressive: As top health officials warn that COVID-19 has become a "pandemic of the unvaccinated," recent figures from states and cities throughout the United States reveal the extent to which the virus is impacting people who are not fully inoculated. Through the words of "top health officials", the author of the news article draws the reader's attention to the fact that the one to blame for the pandemic is an unvaccinated person. The tactic of disrespect is based on expressing reproach towards particular people and implicitly forming a positive image of people demonstrating socially desirable behavior.
The tactic of reference to an expert is about mentioning a highly competent specialist or some authority figure with regard to the information provided in a news article. It is used as a proof of the data and view points provided in an article, acknowledges the verity of some judgment. This tactic is revealed via using quotations and citations as well as through a direct or indirect mention of commissioned people: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that people who are fully vaccinated no longer have to wear masks in many indoor situations. The new guidance reflects evidence that vaccines are highly effective in preventing serious and critical cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus; Walensky noted that the vaccines now being
administered are effective against various circulating variants of the corona-virus, including some that are more transmissible and can cause more serious illness. As one can clearly see, using references can add weight to some point and bolster what the journalist is saying.
The tactic of unicalization is based on underlining and emphasizing a very special role and the utmost significance of precautionary measures in balancing and stabilizing the current situation and avoiding disastrous consequences. Typical linguistic markers of this tactic are lexical means with the semantics of limitation like "only/the only", "nothing else but", "just" etc., intensifiers like "very", "highly", etc. as well as adjectives and adverbs used in the superlative degree: The COVID-19 vaccines are the most effective and important tool to reduce COVID-19 transmission and the spread of variants like the highly transmissible delta variant, " Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a statement.
The tactic of rewarding can be found in news articles promising some additional benefits to people observing safety precautions: People who are fully vaccinated with an FDA-authorized vaccine or a vaccine authorized for emergency use by the World Health Organization can travel safely within the United States.
The tactic of punishment is manifested through mentioning certainty of death or some other dramatic event, i.e. certainty to recompense for some people's irresponsible behavior: A man who refused a coronavirus vaccine was infected and needed a lung transplant, his mom said; Twitter suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene for spreading covid-19 misinformation. On the one hand, this tactic resembles the tactic of a negative forecast described above. However, a closer look at contexts like above shows that the two are different tactics: the tactic of a negative forecast is a prediction or assumption about the future, while that of punishment informs us about particular cases of penalty that have recently taken place as a reaction to some actions or behavior seen as unacceptable or undesirable in the time of coronavirus. So, the tactic of punishment tells us about what has already happened to people neglecting the behavioral norms, whereas the tactics of a negative forecast shows us about what is expected to happen in case of coronavirus misbehavior.
The tactic of references to different countries' experience in the fight against coronavirus is needed to gain the public over the protective measures being taken by the authorities. A mention of a different country seems to guarantee the correctness and reliability of the anti-coronavirus actions taken: Spain's government declared the state of emergency on March 14, 2020, three days after the World Health Organization said the spread of the coronavirus had become a pandemic; France has seen a jump in vaccinations since President Emmanuel Macron announced that passes showing proof of testing or immunization will be required in restaurants and cafes. As the above examples show, references to different countries look like a reliable proof of the certainty of the national anti-coronavirus campaign. Thus, if some national campaign is suspected to be controversial to the audience, or seems to cause protest or doubts, a good way to make it look more reliable is to make reference to some country which is like a
third, but very respected party. This tactic saves the persuader from accusations of subjectivity and bias. Therefore, it is always advantageous for the persuader to seek help from a "third party". Consequently, the communicative intention of the persuader can always be formed under the influence of a "third party". The "third party" seems to the persuader to be more objective, less interested than the persuader himself.
The tactic of warning aims at informing people about some impending danger in advance for them to have enough time to take necessary actions: Large parts of Europe are at the start of a third coronavirus wave, experts have said, with warnings that the decision to pause the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine over health concerns is likely lead to a rise in cases and a high number of deaths as more contagious new variants account for the majority of cases. This text can't be treated as simply news because it mainly focuses on what people should do to stop or decelerate the new wave.
Thus, all the tactics that represent the strategy of persuasion are intended to presenting the situation in a tragic light in case to refuse to use preventive measures.
3. Popular science discourse
As you know, the purpose of any popular science discourse (including coro-navirus) is to popularize objective knowledge, and its leading strategy is that of education/enlightening.
The popular science discourse on coronavirus topics is usually represented by Internet articles about the evolution, origin of the virus, strains of corona-virus, possible manifestations (symptoms) of the disease, the impact of corona-virus on the organisms of people of different ages, etc.: Viruses continually mutate as tiny errors are introduced each time they replicate: The SARS-CoV-2 virus is no different, and has already undergone several thousand mutations since it emerged in humans in late 2019. There are obviously many terms in popular scientific publications, but the form of delivering information is rather simple and entertaining compared to scientific texts.
The above-mentioned strategy of enlightenment is represented in a popular science discourse by a completely predictable and standard set of tactics, such as:
- presentation/enumeration of facts or statistics: People with COVID-19 have had a wide range of symptoms reported - ranging from mild symptoms to severe illness. Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure to the virus. Anyone can have mild to severe symptoms. People with these symptoms may have COVID-19: Fever or chills, Cough, Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, Fatigue, Muscle or body aches, Headache, New loss of taste or smell, Sore throat, Congestion or runny nose, Nausea or vomiting, Diarrhea;
- the argumentative tactic that has to do with describing the procedure of the experiment or appealing to an expert (Moderna announced in March that it was testing a new generation of vaccine in a clinical trial to evaluate their effectiveness against the South African variant), generalizing/summarizing or, on the contrary, specifying the information;
- the tactic of definition (The genetic material of coronavirus consists of ssRNA(+), that is single-stranded RNA of the positive sense );
- the tactic of a dosed and simplified manner to present information (Most scientists suspect the coronavirus originated in bats, but the exact route by which it first jumped into people—via an intermediary animal or in some other way—has not yet been determined. It typically takes decades to narrow down the natural source of an animal virus like Ebola or SARS).
As can be seen, the pragmatics of the popular science discourse is very different from the pragmatic potential of the previously considered varieties of the COVID-19 discourse.
The main difference between the popular science discourse and the socially oriented one is the absence of an undisguised influence on the addressee, the absence of direct (energetic, offensive, assertive and imperative tone) ways to change the recipient's behavior in the former. The popular science discourse leaves the reader the right to make decisions independently.
CONCLUSION
The aforesaid helps us conclude about the dependence of the tactical and strategic structure of the coronavirus discourse on its type (statistical, socially oriented and popular science). Thus, the statistical discourse is characterized by the following set of tactics that implement the strategy of fast reporting: generalizing, compressing, and detailing. As for the popular science discourse, the number of its tactics can also be described as quite limited (argumentative, statistical, simplifying, and definitional tactics contributing to the actualization of the enlightenment strategy). The range of tactics of the socially oriented COVID-19 discourse turns out to be much wider (shocking, showing care, recommendation, forecasting, appealing, exemplifying, dramatizing, discredit, reference to an expert and different countries, rewarding, punishment, and warning), which is due to the specifics of the strategy of persuasion they represent - a strategy that requires a lot of speech efforts so as to be manifested.
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Information about the authors:
I.A. Khorsun, Cand. Sci. (Philology), head of Theory and Practice of the English Language Department, Francisk Skorina Gomel State University (Gomel, Republic of Belarus). E-mail: ihorsun@gsu.by
O.N. Chalova, Cand. Sci. (Philology), associate professor, Francisk Skorina Gomel State University (Gomel, Republic of Belarus). E-mail: oksana-chalova@mail.ru
The authors declare no conflicts of interests.
The article was submitted 26.04.2022; approved after reviewing 30.12.2022; accepted for publication 31.07.2023.
Статья поступила в редакцию 26.04.2022; одобрена после рецензирования 30.12.2022; принята к публикации 31.07.2023.
