Covid-19 Discourse in the New Media: The Language Use Perspective
Keywords:
Covid-19, Discourse, New media, LanguageAbstract
This study is a language based analysis of COVID-19 related discourse on social media, particularly the Face book. The analysis centers on the linguistic mode of communication. Investigation of selected data fundamentally focuses on how various users of Face book deploy language to negotiate meaning, seek affinity, index superiority and assert ideology. Using M.A.K. Holliday’s Systematic Functional Grammar Model, the study aims to analyze language use in social media COVID-19 reportage and also examine and unearth how the social media goings on, cultural dynamics and perception help in generating and constructing text. Holliday’s SFG model has purposively been chosen for this analysis because of its extensive consideration of form, functions and context in the realization of meaning at the multidimensional level. The study discovers, among other things, that the deployment of simple sentences in communicating COVID-19 preventive measures is very necessary as it enhances the free flow of communication and proper understanding of the message to the targeted readers. It also recommends, among other things, that social media discourse should always appear in straight –to – the – point language for ease of communicating the intended message to the targeted readers.
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