Religion and Politics in the context of COVID-19 Narratives: A Critical Discourse Analysis Approach

Abstract

The end of the year 2019 brought to the world a new and problematic coronavirus which has claimed many lives in various parts of the world. The human race is still perplexed by the viciousness of the novel disease since the worldwide death toll continued to rise. This resulted in the World Health Organisation (WHO) declaring the COVID-19 pandemic as a public health threat globally and it announced a raft of mitigatory measures to be undertaken by countries across the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has generated numerous but conflicting conspiracy theories and religious responses which explain the genesis of the disease. It was against this background that the study was motivated to interrogate and problematize the political and religious conceptualization of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is informed by insights from critical discourse analysis to examine the dialogics and semiotics of power embedded in conspiracy theories and debunking religious responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The main contention in this work is that interrogation of political and religious responses is imperative for a more informed conceptualisation of the coronavirus disease. It has been established that the COVID-19 pandemic discourse, just like other discourses, is never neutral since it is a locus laden with attitudes, values, hegemonic practices and power struggles. Interestingly, there is an audible semantic dissonance from both the political and religious understanding of COVID-19 pandemic. The genesis of coronavirus remains in obscurity and it thus demands further academic enquiry.