Public Communication in a Pandemic : Language in COVID‐19 public health advertising
- Authors
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2023
- Source
- DiVA - Academic Archive On-line
- Keywords
- Language
- English
- License
- Green
- External links
Abstract
This linguistic study in the field of pragmatics looked at the language used by public health authorities in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to inform citizens about COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021. It made a qualitative analysis of advertisements that were posted on Instagram by the Department of Health and Aged Care, the National Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in relation to COVID-19 during this time frame. Using Speech Act Theory and Gricean theory on the cooperative principle and conversational implicature, it shows how these linguistic features were operationalised in the advertisements to achieve a certain behaviour from its audience. The study also compared language use between the selected countries and over time. Some minor differences that can be attributed to national contexts, such as sporting events, specific holidays or differences caused by the strategies chosen to address the pandemic were found. / Denna studie i det lingvistiska området pragmatik studerar det språk som användes av folkhälsomyndigheter i Australien, Storbritannien och USA för att informera medborgare om COVID-19 under åren 2020 och 2021. Den gör en kvalitativ analys av COVID-19-relaterade annonser som publicerats på Instagram av australiensiska Department of Health and Aged Care, brittiska National Health Service och amerikanska Centers for Disease control and Prevention under denna tidsperiod. Med hjälp av talaktsteori och Grices teorier om samarbetsprincipen och hans konversationsmaximer visar studien hur dessa språkliga aspekter används i annonserna för att uppnå ett önskat beteende från sin tänkta publik. Studien jämförde även språkanvändning mellan de utvalda länderna och över tid. Några mindre skillnader som kan hänföras till nationella sammanhang, som exempelvis idrottsevenemang, specifika helgdagar eller skillnader orsakade av de strategier som valts för att hantera pandemin noterades.
