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Article published In:
The Linguistic Landscape of Covid-19
Edited by Jackie Jia Lou, David Malinowski and Amiena Peck
[Linguistic Landscape 8:2/3] 2022
► pp. 168–183

Covid-19 and public responsibility

A multimodal critical discourse analysis of blaming the public during the UK’s third wave

ORCID logo | Queen Mary University of London
This paper offers an analysis of a British government publicity campaign during the third national lockdown, which began in England in January 2021. When it came to enforcing lockdown rules, the government’s messaging in the Linguistic Landscape (LL) and elsewhere focused on individualising responsibility for the pandemic. This framing favoured the political interests of the government by apportioning blame for the highest death toll in Europe to the British public’s reckless behaviour, which conveniently elides the government’s own role in the crisis. Drawing on data from social media and the LL, I analyse the publicity campaign according to a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis approach, taking into account the multiple semiotic systems employed to communicate the campaign’s underlying neoliberal ideology.
Keywords: neoliberalism, responsibilisation, British government, Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data
  • 3.Theoretical approach
  • 4.Analysis
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 September 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.21034.str
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