The Changes In The Construction Of Collective Memory Of Public Health Emergencies

Members of a community tend to share similar memory of a certain event,which is described as collective memory.This phenomenon has garnered a lot of attention because its content is dynamically constructed for satisfying the current needs,interests,or anticipation.It has been figured out that powerful institutions usually play a significant role in this process as collective memory is connected with the issues of national identity,ethnic conflict and community cohesion.Through the review,it is found that previous linguistic research on the construction of collective memory focused on the narrations of war and political issues.Besides,most studies selected discourses of a specific period as the analytic target,lack of analysis on how the construction of collective memory changes over time.Therefore,the present study conducts an analysis of the changes in the construction of the collective memory of public health emergencies.Three research questions are proposed:1)What kind of collective memory of public health emergencies is constructed,2)Does the collective memory of public health emergencies change over time?If yes,how does it change?and 3)How is the collective memory of public health emergencies constructed at the linguistic level.The current study focused on the collective memory of the Covid-19 epidemic.The People’s Daily as one of the most influential official media could provide a relatively authoritative view of the collective memory of the Covid-19 epidemic that the Chinese government attempted to convey.Hence,the news reports about the epidemic from January,2020 to June,2021 were selected.For dealing with such a large amount of data,Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling as an analytical tool was adopted to process the selected texts,which assisted in uncovering the topics hidden in the data.The current study found that the collective memory of the Covid-19 epidemic constructed by The People’s Daily involved four main topics:1)epidemic prevention and control,2)economic development,3)international anti-epidemic cooperation and 4)the people’s life during the epidemic.Meanwhile,the sub-topics indicated that the collective memory was constructed revolving around the positive aspects of the epidemic.Besides,according to each month’s topic model,the topics of the news reports were changing over time.In this sense,the construction of collective memory of the Covid-19 epidemic could be divided into four phases.In the first phase from January,2020 to February,2020,through combining the grand narrative with the individual narrative,The People’s Daily constructed a positive and systematic collective memory of the epidemic prevention and control and implanted character symbols into the collective memory by means of the narrations of the heroic deeds of forefront workers.In the second and third phases from March,2020 to December 2020,the construction of collective memory focused on the economic development at home and abroad.Due to the effective preventative measures,China took the lead to resume work and production and subsequently,played a leading role in promoting global economic recovery.In the third phase,the collective memory constructed in the first phase was evoked and enhanced through the reintroduction of the character symbols in the series of commemorative reports.In the fourth phase from January,2021 to June,2021,The People’s Daily paid the most attention to the Covid-19 vaccine.China was devoted to making the vaccine a global public good and promoting the fair distribution of the vaccine.In these news reports,the image of China as a responsible power was continually highlighted.Metaphor was found to be the predominant linguistic device used to construct the collective memory of the Covid-19 epidemic.The present study identified four types of metaphor including the war metaphor,the body metaphor,the test metaphor,and the virus metaphor.The war metaphor was the most prominent metaphor,as the mapping between the war and the epidemic prevention and control ran through the construction of the collective memory of the epidemic.It created an orientation to positive affectivity.The body metaphor was closely connected with the advocation of the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind.The frequent use of the body metaphor conduced to the construction of the friendly and cooperative image of China.The test metaphor mainly occurred in the news reports related to the summary and reflection of the anti-epidemic fight which would guide the public to look back on the performance of the government in the first phase.Thus,the collective memory constructed in the first phase was further enhanced.The virus metaphor was the only metaphor used to arouse negative emotions not towards China but towards the U.S.,which aimed to condemn the U.S.government for intentionally spreading "lab leak theory" to smear China.In summary,most of the news reports portrayed the positive side of the epidemic which guided the people to construct a relatively positive memory of the Covid-19 epidemic.In the whole process,The People’s Daily kept reintroducing the memory of the epidemic prevention and control kept being reintroduced in different phases,in order to consolidate the positive collective memory of the Covid-19 epidemic constructed in the first phase,while adding new contents to the collective memory through introducing new topics related to the epidemic.