Analyzing the Story of a Filipino COVID-19 Survivor through Positioning Analysis

Abstract

COVID-19 has brought so many changes in the world. It is a test of faith and hope to everyone. Many scholars have used different lenses in fields of research in this topic. In language studies, many have zoomed in on this topic in corpus-based linguistics. In discourse analysis, few studies have dealt with this, especially narrative analysis. Using the frameworks of Bamberg (1997) and Barkhuizen (2009), three levels of positioning analysis were unpacked by a COVID-19 survivor’s life story. The first level of positioning answers how the characters positioned themselves concerning the events that happened. On the other hand, the second level of positioning seeks to answer how the characters positioned themselves to the audience. Lastly, the third level of positioning aims to position narrators to themselves. The participant was a student of the researcher who agreed to share his story in this paper. The main character almost lost his life due to COVID-19 and was hospitalized for nearly two weeks. The researcher discovered linguistic elements present during the interview, such as linguistic politeness, transitional devices, metaphors, and discourse particles, that helped the researcher analyze and unpack the three levels of positioning analysis. The actual occurrences that happened to the participant served as a turning point in his experience–from non-believer to believer of COVID-19. The paper further explored how COVID-19 became a test of faith, love, and hope to the participant.