Analyzing and interpreting COVID-19-related texts in Chinese: A systemic functional perspective

Wang, B.; Ma, Y.; Nartey, M.

The COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019) pandemic is a global health threat that seriously affected the lives of Chinese people. This chapter is concerned with analyzing and interpreting various kinds of COVID-19-related texts in Chinese by reference to descriptions of context. We first introduce Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which is one kind of appliable linguistics developed to empower researchers to solve the problems in human life. Then we locate texts along the dimensions of stratification and instantiation in SFL. In addition, we explore the COVID-19-related texts from the perspective of field, one of the three contextual parameters, and categorize such texts based on Matthiessen’s functional text typology. It is found that the COVID-19-related texts are pervasive and play a central role in human life. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Weixiao Wei.