Social Actors and the Language of Othering: A Corpus-Assisted Analysis of the Representation of Covid-19 in Selected Western and Asian English Newspapers

Abstract

As of May 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused approximately 3.5 million deaths and 168 million confirmed cases worldwide. Unfortunately, this crisis has not only resulted in a devastating loss of human life but has also given rise to racism, national insecurity, and general xenophobia. This phenomenon can be understood through the concept of ”othering,” which refers to the exclusion of individuals or entire groups based on their ascribed or enacted identities. This study aims to investigate how social actors are constructed by selected Western and Asian English newspapers in relation to Covid-19. Specifically, it seeks to examine whether language of othering is used by different English users (West vs. Asia, inner circle vs. outer circle) in representing the 2020’s deadliest pandemic. To achieve this, the researcher has custom-collected six different newspapers: New Straits Times (Malaysia), The Straits Times (Singapore), Philippines Daily Inquirer (Philippines), The New York Times (US), The Guardian (UK), and The Australian (Australia). A simple corpus query language is used to analyze common nouns in the corpus, focusing on proper nouns and possessive nouns, which will be ranked by frequency. The semantic preference of the most frequent nomination strategy for social actors will be further explored through tagging and categorization of collocates. This study aims to reveal if any social actors were dehumanized or discriminated against through the language used in relation to Covid-19 across the selected Western and Asian newspapers.
 Keywords: Covid-19, othering, newspapers, social actors, corpus