Kindness in British communities

Discursive practices of promoting kindness during the Covid pandemic

Bibliographic Data

ID12252995
AuthorsJilan Wei (0000-0001-6474-3012, Changzhou Institute of Technology, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume34
Issue4
Pages502-520
Publication date2023-01-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiscourse & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0957-9265 • E-ISSN: 1460-3624
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/09579265221148691
PMID37829999
OpenAlexW4319838911
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited24

This research adopts Critical Discourse Analysis as a perspective to explore how kindness was expressed and promoted in university communities and city communities from January to March in 2020 when the Covid pandemic broke out in the UK and provide a window on British culture in which kindness was expressed and promoted through discourse. It combines a qualitative method with a corpus-based quantitative method. It is found that kindness was meant for providing support and showing compassion and inclusion to community members and that strategies in lexis, syntax and metaphor can reproduce or resist the expression and promotion of kindness in communities. During the pandemic, the intentional kindness expressed by community authorities was respect of diversity rather than inclusion of different values or ethnicity and no substantial support was provided to vulnerable members even though authorities were trying to impress the public by claiming that they were making constant efforts to support the community. Case studies revealed that we should caution against the use of passivation and the pronouns like they

Compassion · Critical discourse analysis · Ideology · Kindness · Linguistics · Metaphor · Political science · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access