A Transitivity Analysis of Covid-19 anti-vax discourses in Brazilian Portuguese and German on Twitter

Description

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the spread of disinformation and
conspiracy narratives and has further revived anti-vaccine movements
around the globe. In order to understand the central arguments and
discursive patterns present in these movements, this research aims to
describe, analyse, and compare the transitivity patterns of anti-vax
campaigns on Twitter in Brazilian Portuguese and German posted between
December 2020 and February 2021. Looking at the representational
meanings of anti-vaccination discourses in Brazilian Portuguese and
German, in two distinct socio-political contexts will allow new insights into
anti-vax discourses from a context-sensitive and language-comparative
perspective. In terms of the methodological approach, the linguistic
resources were analysed through the Transitivity System proposed by
Halliday (2004, 2014). Partial results have shown that the local sociopolitical context affects the main arguments of the anti-vaccine Tweets,
which also reflect nationalist discourses. The social relevance of this
research is based on the necessity to understand the arguments and
ideologies that support anti-vax movements to start a ‘non-judgemental’
dialogue (Kata, 2012). Such a dialogue can open up new perspectives on
anti-vax discourses as well as new approaches of tackling the negative
effects of misinformation such as e.g. vaccine hesitancy.

Keywords: Covid-19, Anti-vax Discourse, Portuguese Language, German
Language, Transitivity System.

Period	16 Nov 2021 → 19 Nov 2021
Event title	Systemic Functional Linguistics Interest Group
Event type	Unknown
Degree of Recognition	International