| The outbreak of COVID-19 in December 2019 has posed a challenge to global public health undertakings.In order to tackle this crisis,countries like the United Kingdom have adopted various “securitization” measures to solve public health security problems.Taking Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as the theoretical framework and Copenhagen School’s Securitization Theory as the analytical tool,this study aims to explore the security discourse presented by the British government during the pandemic.The author collected 42 speeches from Prime Minister Boris Johnson and 40 speeches from Matt Hancock,a total of 82 speeches as the research materials.Based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model,this thesis will demonstrate and analyze from the following three aspects.When doing the text analysis,the lexical choice and the use of war metaphors are selected to study the linguistic features of the security discourse,so as to explore how the British government constructs an “existential threat”.When conducting the discursive practice analysis,the British government highlights the intertextuality in security discourse and further spreads the “existential threat” by citing data and views of people.When performing the social practice analysis,the author will further explore how the government tackles this “existential threat” through security discourse by tracking people’s acceptance of securitizing COVID-19.Through the research,the major findings are as follows: at the level of text analysis,the British government emphasizes the risks brought by the virus through the detailed description of security elements “threat” and “referent object”,and strengthens people’s“battle awareness” through the use of war metaphors.At the level of discursive practice analysis,the British government makes the British people intuitively feel the damage of the virus by citing data from different authorities,and by citing different views of people to emphasize that the virus is a risk that everyone may face.At the level of social practice analysis,after tracking people’s acceptance of the government’s epidemic prevention measures and the changes of people’s daily behaviors during the pandemic,it can be found that the government will influence social practice through security discourse to tackle the “existential threat” during the pandemic.This study focuses on studying the “British model” in response to COVID-19 pandemic,which is applicable to the subsequent research on governance models of other western countries.Besides,it uses linguistics as a research tool,which to some extents enriches the relevant research between linguistics and security studies.Furthermore,the present thesis is helpful to provide a new research perspective from the disciplinary perspective of international and regional studies in foreign language and literature,so it has certain practical significance. |
