Linguistic communication analysis of discursive antagonisms in the corona crisis

Abstract

The Corona crisis has led to internal conflict and the creation of enormous societal chasms in many countries of the world that would have been unthinkable a year ago. This divide is in large part being created, reproduced and deepened through ongoing antagonistic discursive practices. This article aims at outlining the theoretical groundwork for the analysis and description of the resulting discursive camps and the facilitating processes. It endeavors to bridge the theoretical gap between traditional political discourse theory and linguistic communication analysis and show promising methodological pathways for forensic analysis of multimodal resources and their communicative use in the current Corona associated discourses.