Interdiscursivity through Foucault’s dreams of the plague: discursive constructions of the covid-19 pandemic in The New York Times

ABSTRACT

Adopting an interdiscursive approach to text and discourse, this study investigates the complex and interwoven discursive relations between various social and discursive practices in The New York Times’s representation of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of its outbreak in the United States. Drawing on Foucault’s analysis of the political dream of order and the literary dreams of anarchy during the plague, this study demonstrates that the intertextual relations in the newspaper’s discourses surrounding the pandemic can be analyzed in terms of the distinctions, connections, and oscillations between Foucault’s political and literary dreams. While the political dream emerges primarily through the newspaper’s reportage of government orders on pandemic measures and medical practices recommended by medical professionals, the literary dream is often conceived through representations of individual suspension of order and questioning authorities on treating the virus. This study further shows that the interactions between the two dreams give rise to a new discursive dream that highlights individual autonomy and reconceptualizes individuals’ relations to government orders as a result of their own agency. Teaming up Foucault’s analysis of the two dreams of the plague with an intertextual approach to text and discourse offers a comprehensive and coherent understanding of the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Foucault
• interdiscursivity
• the COVID-19 pandemic
• pandemic discourse
• The New York Times

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Juan Li

Juan Li is an Associate Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas, MN. Her research and teaching interests focus on discourse theory and analysis, language and power, and stylistics. Her work has appeared in journals such as Discourse and Society, Critical Discourse Studies, Journal of Pragmatics, Metaphor and Symbol, Language and Literature, and Semiotica.