Overview

Focusing on the discursive dimension of the COVID-19 pandemic from a semiotic perspective, this book uses semiotic theory and methods to analyse the meaning-making mechanisms and dynamics that occurred during, and revolved around, the pandemic. Demonstrating the utility of semiotic theory, concepts and analytical methods to make sense of discursive phenomena like those triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the book explores in detail: · the blame-attribution discourses that emerged at the beginning of the pandemic; · how the coronavirus was brought to life in plastic and visual manifestations as a monster that poses a threat to humans; · how the collective actor ‘the healthcare workers’ was constructed in discourse and axiologised in positive terms; · the semiotics of the body during the pandemic, with a focus on the face, facemasks, social distancing and the uses of the body in online environments; · the idea of a ‘new’ normality following the pandemic. The book examines different dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic, including examples from Europe, Latin America and the United States and a wide range of images, texts, practices and objects, in order to highlight the importance of its discursive and semiotic nature.

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9781350359604

Table of Contents

Reviews

""The Semiotics of the Covid-19 Pandemic is a rigorously executed semiotic analysis of the main features of meaning-making in the exceptional timeframe of the pandemic. It has a multi-methodological foundation and generates many useful analytic categories for those interested in carrying forward its insights in the revivified post-pandemic space-time still struggling to reinstitute a hard to define normality."" --Smart Semiotics ""The strength of this text lies in its ability to furnish a thorough explanatory framework for cultural semiotic perspectives on the Covid-19 pandemic. It is accompanied by a broad range of analyses, equally extensive, which substantiate the analytical methodologies and theoretical foundations guiding the research."" --Claudio Paolucci, University of Bologna, Italy ""This is semiotics at work in the service of the community: no wandering speculations on signs but a book grounded in the recent past, that addresses real problems, helps us understand them, and prepares us to confront future pandemics. This book brilliantly demonstrates the relevance of semiotics for devising comprehensive policies that take into account the human craving for meaning."" --Paul Bouissac, University of Toronto, Canada ""Pandemics not only illuminate aspects of human weakness and fragility, but also motivate reappraisals of the world, which, in turn, impact social mindsets. Plagues have always presented a choice: return to the status quo or reinvent the world. They also activate mechanisms of denial and other rhetorical-semiotic strategies. This book takes into the heart of those strategies, dissecting them into their meaning-making components, which allows us to understand better why so many were blamed even as they lost their lives. This is a very important book. It is required reading; new pandemics are just around the corner."" --Marcel Danesi, University of Toronto, Canada

The Semiotics of the Covid-19 Pandemic is a rigorously executed semiotic analysis of the main features of meaning-making in the exceptional timeframe of the pandemic. It has a multi-methodological foundation and generates many useful analytic categories for those interested in carrying forward its insights in the revivified post-pandemic space-time still struggling to reinstitute a hard to define normality. * Smart Semiotics * The strength of this text lies in its ability to furnish a thorough explanatory framework for cultural semiotic perspectives on the Covid-19 pandemic. It is accompanied by a broad range of analyses, equally extensive, which substantiate the analytical methodologies and theoretical foundations guiding the research. -- Claudio Paolucci, University of Bologna, Italy This is semiotics at work in the service of the community: no wandering speculations on signs but a book grounded in the recent past, that addresses real problems, helps us understand them, and prepares us to confront future pandemics. This book brilliantly demonstrates the relevance of semiotics for devising comprehensive policies that take into account the human craving for meaning. * Paul Bouissac, University of Toronto, Canada * Pandemics not only illuminate aspects of human weakness and fragility, but also motivate reappraisals of the world, which, in turn, impact social mindsets. Plagues have always presented a choice: return to the status quo or reinvent the world. They also activate mechanisms of denial and other rhetorical-semiotic strategies. This book takes into the heart of those strategies, dissecting them into their meaning-making components, which allows us to understand better why so many were blamed even as they lost their lives. This is a very important book. It is required reading; new pandemics are just around the corner. * Marcel Danesi, University of Toronto, Canada *

Author Information

Sebastián Moreno Barreneche is Associate Lecturer at the Faculty of Management and Social Sciences of Universidad ORT Uruguay, Uruguay, and an active researcher of Uruguay’s National Research System (SNI).

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