Discursive epidemic: considerations from a discourse analysis perspective and communication studies

ABSTRACT

In this article, of an essayistic nature, we aim to present theoretical-conceptual foundations in the field of discourse and communication that allow us to reflect on epidemics as discursive realities (Maingueneau, 2020). For this, we revisit research developed by Bessa (1997;2002), Treichler (1987), Daniel and Parker (2018) and Santos Filho (2020) on the HIV/aids epidemic and tension the contemporary experience of the COVID-19 pandemic in a mediatization scenario. From our reflection, we propose, as a result, the expansion of the concept of discursive epidemic as a set of imaginaries created and shared discursively by different social spheres, in a context of mediatization and excess of statements on a certain theme, expressing certain dominant worldviews in a given society and at a given moment, but which, through proliferation and lasting reiteration without mutability, are consolidated in the collective memory in such a powerful way as to be frequently remembered.