Analyzing the Story of a Filipino COVID-19 Survivor through Positioning Analysis
Marlon S. Pontillas
Discipline: Cultural Studies
Abstract:
COVID-19 has brought so many changes in the world. It is a test of faith and hope to everyone.
Many scholars have used different lenses in fields of research in this topic. In language studies,
many have zoomed in on this topic in corpus-based linguistics. In discourse analysis, few studies
have dealt with this, especially narrative analysis. Using the frameworks of Bamberg (1997) and
Barkhuizen (2009), three levels of positioning analysiswere unpacked by a COVID-19 survivor’s life
story. The first level of positioning answers how the characters positioned themselves concerning
the events that happened. On the other hand, the second level of positioning seeks to answer how
the characters positioned themselves to the audience. Lastly, the third level of positioning aims
to position narrators to themselves. The participant was a student of the researcher who agreed
to share his story in this paper. The main character almost lost his life due to COVID-19 and was
hospitalized for nearly two weeks. The researcher discovered linguistic elements present during
the interview, such as linguistic politeness, transitional devices, metaphors, and discourse particles,
that helped the researcher analyze and unpack the three levels of positioning analysis. The actual
occurrences that happened to the participant served as a turning point in his experience–from
non-believer to believer of COVID-19. The paper further explored how COVID-19 became a test
of faith, love, and hope to the participant.
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