Speech Strategies and the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The interest in monitoring and analyzing the speech messages in the context of the coronavirus pandemic is due to two hypotheses related to the responsible Bulgarian institutions, some medical workers and media. The first is that they do not have enough knowledge and skills to select and direct useful and correct information in crisis situation. The second hypothesis is that they do not present appropriate mechanisms for the formation of socially useful behavior in moments of required mass mobilization in a certain direction. I look for a reason for both hypotheses in the media messages related to the pandemic. That is why in this article I make the comparison between two French and two Bulgarian newspapers, as the excerpted material was taken only within one day, something like a snapshot. The comparison shows that the French have a unified speech strategy for reaching the reader and forming public opinion, while in the Bulgarian ones it is partially or completely absent.