A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccination-Related News Discourse in the Malaysian Mainstream Media

The deadly impact of COVID-19 has caused authorities worldwide to resort to vaccination as an exit strategy. Some have even imposed vaccination as a mandatory policy to ensure social compliance. Many studies have focused on the issues of discrimination and polarisation due to the virus and the vacci...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:3L: Language, Linguistics, Literature
Main Author: Abas N.; Aziz R.A.; Turiman S.; Daud N.S.M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2023
Online Access:https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85173168169&doi=10.17576%2f3L-2023-2903-11&partnerID=40&md5=6bde75ce096dd6f9d2c996c8960abe24
id 2-s2.0-85173168169
spelling 2-s2.0-85173168169
Abas N.; Aziz R.A.; Turiman S.; Daud N.S.M.
A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccination-Related News Discourse in the Malaysian Mainstream Media
2023
3L: Language, Linguistics, Literature
29
3
10.17576/3L-2023-2903-11
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85173168169&doi=10.17576%2f3L-2023-2903-11&partnerID=40&md5=6bde75ce096dd6f9d2c996c8960abe24
The deadly impact of COVID-19 has caused authorities worldwide to resort to vaccination as an exit strategy. Some have even imposed vaccination as a mandatory policy to ensure social compliance. Many studies have focused on the issues of discrimination and polarisation due to the virus and the vaccines, but very little is known about vaccination as a process of generating compliance, especially in the Malaysian context. Hence, the paper aims to address this gap by examining how COVID-19 vaccination is discursively profiled in the Malaysian mainstream media. The study utilised corpus analysis and Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in examining the corpus of 1514 vaccination-related news reports in the Malaysian mainstream media amounting to approximately 924028 tokens. Through the discursive strategies of referential/nomination and predication, the findings indicated that vaccination was strongly affiliated with those representing the government and its ideology. To generate compliance, vaccination was described as synonymous with the national agenda. Hence, vaccination was dominantly assigned positive labels that promoted this ideology, except for the very few negative labels attributed to the mandatory policy, the effects of vaccination and the deadly impact of COVID-19 infection. The study not only contributes to the vast literature on COVID-19 but it also provides a linguistic analysis that combines corpus techniques and CDA to examine a discursive practice that can further pave the way for uncovering the ideological discourse in the mainstream media. © 2023 Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. All rights reserved.
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
1285157
English
Article
All Open Access; Gold Open Access; Green Open Access
author Abas N.; Aziz R.A.; Turiman S.; Daud N.S.M.
spellingShingle Abas N.; Aziz R.A.; Turiman S.; Daud N.S.M.
A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccination-Related News Discourse in the Malaysian Mainstream Media
author_facet Abas N.; Aziz R.A.; Turiman S.; Daud N.S.M.
author_sort Abas N.; Aziz R.A.; Turiman S.; Daud N.S.M.
title A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccination-Related News Discourse in the Malaysian Mainstream Media
title_short A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccination-Related News Discourse in the Malaysian Mainstream Media
title_full A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccination-Related News Discourse in the Malaysian Mainstream Media
title_fullStr A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccination-Related News Discourse in the Malaysian Mainstream Media
title_full_unstemmed A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccination-Related News Discourse in the Malaysian Mainstream Media
title_sort A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccination-Related News Discourse in the Malaysian Mainstream Media
publishDate 2023
container_title 3L: Language, Linguistics, Literature
container_volume 29
container_issue 3
doi_str_mv 10.17576/3L-2023-2903-11
url https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85173168169&doi=10.17576%2f3L-2023-2903-11&partnerID=40&md5=6bde75ce096dd6f9d2c996c8960abe24
description The deadly impact of COVID-19 has caused authorities worldwide to resort to vaccination as an exit strategy. Some have even imposed vaccination as a mandatory policy to ensure social compliance. Many studies have focused on the issues of discrimination and polarisation due to the virus and the vaccines, but very little is known about vaccination as a process of generating compliance, especially in the Malaysian context. Hence, the paper aims to address this gap by examining how COVID-19 vaccination is discursively profiled in the Malaysian mainstream media. The study utilised corpus analysis and Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in examining the corpus of 1514 vaccination-related news reports in the Malaysian mainstream media amounting to approximately 924028 tokens. Through the discursive strategies of referential/nomination and predication, the findings indicated that vaccination was strongly affiliated with those representing the government and its ideology. To generate compliance, vaccination was described as synonymous with the national agenda. Hence, vaccination was dominantly assigned positive labels that promoted this ideology, except for the very few negative labels attributed to the mandatory policy, the effects of vaccination and the deadly impact of COVID-19 infection. The study not only contributes to the vast literature on COVID-19 but it also provides a linguistic analysis that combines corpus techniques and CDA to examine a discursive practice that can further pave the way for uncovering the ideological discourse in the mainstream media. © 2023 Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. All rights reserved.
publisher Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
issn 1285157
language English
format Article
accesstype All Open Access; Gold Open Access; Green Open Access
record_format scopus
collection Scopus
_version_ 1818940559262220288