Who is an expert? A corpus-assisted analysis of the expert in Swedish Covid-19 discourse

Abstract

This article explores a prevalent thematic strand of the Swedish public discourse on Covid-19 pandemic strategies. Analyzing the construction and role of the expert as it has been played out in the news media coverage of Covid-19 in four leading Swedish daily newspapers throughout the first two months of the pandemic in 2020 (February and March), the contribution asks who counts as a trustworthy expert, and to what extent such ascriptions are used in debates about the Swedish coronavirus strategy, which has aroused much interest and criticism. One of the important findings is the concept of a reliable and rational expert who is, primarily, a Swedish epidemiologist. Also noteworthy is the fact that the role of the expert and the very word expert seem to be under negotiation. This contribution is situated within the framework of discourse linguistics and explores segments of discourse understood as collectively shared knowledge. A partly corpus-assisted methodology is used. The study aims to link linguistic utterances on the expert’s role in the pandemic with the level of important social actors in the course of the pandemic in Sweden.