Affiliation:
1. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
2. King’s College London
Abstract
Abstract
This paper investigates accounts justifying the closures of businesses found on public signs in Athens and London
during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data for the study was drawn from a corpus of COVID-19-related public signage collected in the
two cities during the first lockdown. The accounts used on these signs are analysed as acts of identity and, specifically, as
discursive means deployed by the authors of the signs to project themselves and their businesses favourably. It is shown that the
accounts used at the micro-level of discourse align to various degrees with the dominant discourses surrounding the pandemic at
the macro-level and with the values these discourses draw upon. It is also shown that the accounts are used to reframe the
public’s understanding of the closures and to construct identities congruent with the interests of the business owners, ensuring
post-pandemic continuity.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Philosophy,Language and Linguistics
Cited by
8 articles.
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