Performance of Language: A Comparative Linguistic Study of News About China and Italy During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Canadian News Program

Abstract

The project is a comparative linguistic study on the COVID-19 coverage about China and Italy during the first 3-months of 2020 from the Canadian news program The National. It includes a research paper and a website featuring an animation displaying information silenced by mainstream media. The theoretical framework of the paper is situated within language ideology and is guided by Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies methodology. Through patterns discovered in the research, it aims to detect the contrareity in the language that The National used between the two countries, and the strategies employed in the performance of “respectable racism” (Antonius, 2002) on China. The animation enunciates the incongruity between the two countries by juxtaposing the prejudiced words used implicitly in China’s corpora with the words in Italy’s corpora. This project hopes to disrupt the status quo in the information dissemination dictated by mainstream media which ostracizes the Chinese community and divides Canadians.