A Critical Discourse Analysis to Prevent the Second Wave of COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia

Abstract

The government's choice of complicated language style in communicating issues or cases of Covid-19 risks bringing misunderstandings among the public. The choice of terms which are very elitist will only target certain circles. The government's communication strategy during this pandemic certainly creates new problems. One of the impacts arising from the government's elitist communication approach is the emergence of an information gap between the upper middle class and lower middle class which has a systemic impact, for example the panic buying phenomenon ahead of the implementation of the Social Restrictions Large-Scale (PSBB). In linguistics, an information (discourse) can be framed with topicalization techniques. This technique is a strategy for promoting information that will be highlighted. The part of the information that has a higher negative meaning burden tends to be not highlighted. The issue of the increase in positive cases of Covid-19 does not seem too prominent.