Skip to content

Booksellers & Trade Customers: Sign up for online bulk buying at trade.atlanticbooks.com for wholesale discounts

Booksellers: Create Account on our B2B Portal for wholesale discounts

Covid Semiotics: Magical Thinking and the Management of Meaning

by Mark Allen Peterson
Save 35% Save 35%
Current price ₹3,154.00
Original price ₹4,852.00
Original price ₹4,852.00
Original price ₹4,852.00
(-35%)
₹3,154.00
Current price ₹3,154.00

Imported Edition - Ships in 12-14 Days

Free Shipping in India on orders above Rs. 500

Request Bulk Quantity Quote
+91
Book cover type: Paperback
  • ISBN13: 9781032462424
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: Taylor & Francis
  • Publisher Imprint: Routledge
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 192
  • Original Price: GBP 37.99
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 288 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): Linguistics / Sociolinguistics, Anthropology / General, and Health Care Delivery

This book examines how people around the world have articulated and shaped their experiences of COVID-19 through a sociolinguistic phenomenon known as magical thinking. Using case studies from throughout the world - China, Egypt, Europe, Jordan, Thailand, East Jerusalem, the UK, and the United States - this volume looks at how people managed ambiguity and uncertainty, risk, and social isolation by viewing their experiences of the pandemic as other than, or alongside, those presented by voices and images representing scientifically derived knowledge. Each chapter in the volume introduces the reader to a core semiotic concept and shows how it can be used to analyze and unpack a specific signifying practice. In the conclusion, the several concepts from the chapters - ideological positioning, entextualization and recontextualization, double-voicing, discursive grafting, imaging, and contagion - are revisited and synthesized in order to demonstrate that semiotics is useful not only in ethnographic studies of various "others" and of various "crises," but also in explaining the quotidian experiences of everyday life. Ultimately, this book reveals that COVID-related magical thinking practices are often as "contagious" as the virus they reimagine, spreading through social media and resulting in such social phenomena as viral videos promoting and rejecting public health practices, the first-lockdown stockpiling of toilet paper and hand sanitizer, resistance to public health recommendations, anti-vax rhetoric, and competing interpretations of emerging public health data. This book not only represents cutting-edge research in the field, but it also provides students of anthropology, linguistics, media, and communication with the vocabulary and conceptual framework to understand the human experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mark Allen Peterson is Professor of Anthropology and Global and Intercultural Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. His work focuses on media, consumption, and globalization. He has done fieldwork in Egypt, India, and the United States.

Colleen Cotter is Professor of Media Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. Her research areas include news media language, endangered languages (Irish), US/ UK newsroom ethnography, and the performative dimensions of public messaging and language style across modalities.

Trusted for over 49 years

Family Owned Company

Secure Payment

All Major Credit Cards/Debit Cards/UPI & More Accepted

New & Authentic Products

India's Largest Distributor

Need Support?

Whatsapp Us