Masked Covid life: a socio-semiotic investigation

ABSTRACT

The necessity of wearing masks in response to the spread of the Covid-19 took Europe and the USA by surprise. Legislation needed to be enacted to enforce the obligation on citizens not used to such practices. The authors investigate the semiotic function of masks, legislations enacted to enforce their usage in public places, and the mask-related discourse (MRD) with a view to seeing how societies reacted to this imposition. A broad semiotic perspective is provided to analyze different attitudes and types of MRD that have emerged in Poland, France, and the USA.