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Part of
Risk Discourse and Responsibility
Edited by Annelie Ädel and Jan-Ola Östman
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 336] 2023
► pp. 142–169

Chapter 6
“Your health is in your hands”

The linguistic construction of responsibility in COVID-19 storefront signage in New York City

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COVID provided researchers an unfortunate but opportune moment to examine the relationship between disease transmission, public health messaging, and cultural values. Most studies highlight the effectiveness of collective messaging and concerns regarding individualist messages. However, these studies examine COVID message effectiveness from a public health perspective and do not investigate signs from a linguistic or discourse perspective. Contributing to research on the linguistic/discursive construction of responsibility and risk (e.g., Ädel et al., Chapter 1 in this volume; Östman & Solin 2016) and research on linguistic landscape (Chun 2022; Shohamy & Gorter 2009), this study uses Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) Discourses in Place to examine (1) how responsibility and risk are constructed in storefront COVID signage and (2) how those constructions index cultural values of individuals and collectivism. Data include over 500 photographs of COVID-19 storefront signage, including 171 individual, unique signs, gathered across four of New York City’s five boroughs between September of 2020 and January of 2021. Findings describe both linguistic and structural (sign layout) constructions of responsibility and risk.

Keywords: linguistic landscape, responsibilization, COVID-19, cultural values, public health messages, neoliberalism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Culture in the time of COVID
  • 3.Political discourses in the linguistic landscape
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Data analysis
    • 5.1Responsibility, when?
    • 5.2Who is responsible, and for what?
    • 5.3Responsible to whom?
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 24 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.336.06lan
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