A Critical Discourse Analysis of the United States Stigmatizing China in the Outbreak of COVID-19

Abstract

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, China has acted quickly and taken its responsibility to take strict and effective actions, forming a line of defensing the widespread of the novel coronavirus. However, some American media and politicians stigmatized China on the ground of the virus, criticized actions that China has taken, so as to instigate people’s resistance against China. Based on critical discourse analysis theory, this paper analyzes the United States actions of stigmatizing China in the outbreak of COVID-19 from classification, transitivity, mood and transformation, aiming to discover the political ideology behind American’s stigmatization discourses, which is beneficial to safeguard the truth of China’s fighting against COVID-19 and construct China’s discourse mechanism in response to stigmatization.