Language of COVID-19: Discourse of Fear and Sinophobia

The study investigates the impact of the language used to report about COVID-19 in perpetuating the discourse of fear and eventually raising anti-Chinese sentiments. In the first phase, the data was based on the narrative, descriptions, and memoirs published in “The New York Times” since the outbreak of the coronavirus. In addition to this, a purposive sample of 30 male and female university students was also selected to record their lived experiences of COVID-19. The discursive themes were explored by codifying the qualitative data. In the second phase, I designed a questionnaire to investigate the significant value and correlation among the discursive themes. One hundred and three male and female university students of various demographic backgrounds responded to the survey. Findings reveal that the infection has promoted bizarre linguistic forms about the public sphere and social life that generates the discourse of fear. The discussion of fear portrays as ingroup vulnerability and outgroup threat that boil down into nationalism and Sinophobia. The structural equation model shows that there an impact of the language of COVID-19 on the discourse of fear and Sinophobia. The study recommends the use of neutral and contextual language that might act as a vaccine to control the spread of fear and racist feelings.