The Role of Language during the Pandemic: A Mixed-method Exploration of Discourse of Fear and Sinophobia

Among the media outlets, the newspapers were an important source of information about the COVID-19 lockdown; however, the language chosen to see the pandemic world cascaded surreal feelings. Fewer scholarly studies are available which have investigated the role of language during the pandemic. This study explores the pandemic language and its contribution to the discourse of fear and anti-Chinese sentiments. Data was collected from English newspaper articles and university students’ responses to questionnaires. The discursive themes were assessed, evaluated, and described by codifying the qualitative data. These themes were further analyzed and correlated through quantitative data to seek the goodness-of-fit. Findings revealed that the language used to report the infection perpetuated fear and Sinophobia. The study posits that linguists must come forward and work with journalists to introduce the language to control fear and promote pluralism to manage the crisis.