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Covid-19Next Gen Literacies

Creativity and exclusion in China’s COVID-19 linguistic landscapes

By July 12, 202262 Comments6 min read6,762 views

Figure 1: Notice at village turn back point (Weibo screenshot)

There has been ongoing international debate over China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, yet the specific language and semiotic resources used in China to enforce local measures to contain the pandemic require further assessment.

As a Chinese person living overseas, I have become aware of disturbing narratives around the coronavirus pandemic through my engagement with Weibo. In this post, I report my observations of selected COVID-related signs created by local authorities in China. These grassroots COVID-19 linguistic landscapes, I argue, suggest creative language use but convey exclusionary ideologies.

Roadblocks and fear

A key feature of COVID-19 linguistic landscapes in local rural communities in China is the use of linguistic and semiotic resources drawn from the immediate environment where such signs are placed. An example is Figure 1, which shows a sign stuck on a blackboard placed in the middle of the road. The sign reads:

亲情告示
各位父老乡亲,疫情依然严重,防控期间严禁出门,严守规矩,我们这没有雷神山,没有火神山,没有钟南山,只有抬上山!大家尽量别出去,别出去,别出去!别让大家的努力前功尽弃!!!
Kind Notice
Dear elders, relatives, and fellow villagers, since the pandemic is still severe, going out is strictly forbidden and rigid adherence to the rules are expected during the prevention and control period. There is no Leishenshan (Thunder God Hill Hospital), nor Huoshenshan (Fire God Hill Hospital), nor Zhong Nanshan (Pulmonary Specialist), but Taishangshan (lifting the bodies up the hill). Everyone please don’t go out, don’t go out, don’t go out! Don’t let all our efforts end up in vain! [my translation]

This sign was posted by the villagers’ committee in an early attempt to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. The word play of the last syllable 山([ʂan]) in Leishenshan, Huoshenshan, Zhong Nanshan, and Taishangshan adds playfulness and strength to the message.

For background: Thunder God Hill Hospital and Fire God Hill Hospital were temporary hospitals used specifically to treat COVID-19 patients in Wuhan. The construction of these hospitals was completed within just two weeks during the early outbreak of the coronavirus. Zhong Nanshan is a widely trusted infectious disease expert who won acclamation for coordinating diagnosis and treatment efforts during the SARS outbreak in 2008.

Figure 2. Red banner addressing village returnees (Weibo screenshot)

Villages obviously have none of these resources.

Due to the lack of hospital facilities and medical experts in this rural area, ‘Taishangshan’ is intended as a joke but also as a warning to villagers of the potentially lethal outcome of getting infected with COVID-19 – up the hill is a grave for those who might not survive. More importantly, the notice not only enforces the stay-at-home order linguistically but, positioned at the middle of the road, the blackboard on which the notice was stuck and the bamboo pole at the back physically act as a barricade restricting the mobility of people attempting to go to and from the village.

At the same time, this sign not only serves to warn and protect but may also ignite fear and prompt more extreme measures to segregate the healthy from the infected because of the implied gravity of the pandemic.

Red banners and defamatory discourses

There is also a particular genre of signs that single out members of the overseas Chinese community and portray them as the ‘culprits’ in spreading the coronavirus. These signs are situated within a broader discourse around returning overseas Chinese who fail to comply with quarantine regulations after entry into China. After countless reproductions in the online space, the debate quickly escalated into hate speech targeting all returnees.

Figure 2 illustrates an extreme example of this narrative. The image depicts a red banner which blatantly states “带病回村 不孝子孙”, meaning “returning village with disease, what an unfilial child you are”. This denigrating statement not only employs a rhythmic rhetorical device (村 [tsʰʊən] and 孙 [sʊən]) but also conjures the potential breach of filial piety – a core cultural and moral value in Confucianism and a powerful social norm in the governance of compact rural communities with their inherited patriarchal clan social system and close ties between parents and children – to warn against the movement of travellers.

Figure 3. A ‘Positive Building’ blocked by green fences (Weibo screenshot)

Red banners represent a specific genre of ideological propaganda that can be found in both cities and rural villages, although their political connotation has often given way to pragmatic usage in modern Chinese society. This disheartening message suggests a flat rejection of returning villagers from overseas and internal migrants from other provinces by characterising them as infectious and unfilial. It also discourages those who are worried about becoming the target of criticism from travelling because there is a slight chance that they might be infected and contagious yet asymptomatic during the incubation period.

A viral phrase that was part of this discourse asserts that “家乡建设你不在,万里投毒你最快” (You were absent in the hometown’s construction, but now you are travelling from afar and spreading poison most swiftly), again blaming overseas Chinese returnees for spreading the virus even though only a few members of this group were reportedly disobedient with relevant preventative procedures.

Building fences and symbolic deterrence

Such exclusionary ideologies continued to be reproduced in the recent Shanghai lockdown, starting in March 2022. As Figure 3 shows, fences were installed around the entrances to residential buildings. This type of ‘hard quarantine’ was often implemented by street or neighbourhood committees to segregate ‘lockdown zones’ (residential areas with reported positive cases) or ‘positive buildings’, as per municipal policy requirements. These fences were not made of sturdy materials, however, and did not appear to be strong or tall enough to prevent genuine rule-breakers and were more likely serving as a symbolic deterrence to residents and visitors.

For ‘controlled zones’ (other areas in communities or towns where lockdown zones are located) and ‘precautionary zones’ (areas outside lockdown zones and controlled zones), other forms of fencing were observed. Figure 4 shows the use of road fences bearing the notice “安全生产,文明施工” (Safe production, Civilised construction). This represents the appropriation of a sign from a construction site to a new context — COVID prevention and control (Curtin, 2015).

Figure 4. A ‘controlled zone’ blocked by road fences (Weibo screenshot)

Unlike the green ones, these fences were not fixed to the ground, and their portability allowed people some mobility. In a sense, the types of material objects employed as passage blockers are suggestive of allowable human movement and thus the severity of restriction. The emplacement of language in this physical environment (in front of a residential building) not only deprives the text of its original meaning but also endows it with a sarcastic perlocutionary effect, as ‘civilised’ contradicts the stringent COVID restriction measures in the broader context. It should be noted that, as I was writing this blog post, the Shanghai lockdown was lifted (on 1 June), and the removal of these fences soon followed.

In summary, I have discussed some examples of grassroots COVID signs that were created using a variety of linguistic and semiotic resources drawn from the local surroundings. These roadblocks, red banners, and building fences have illustrated the creative uses of languages including word play, rhetorical device and perlocutionary effect. Meanwhile, they constitute the COVID-19 linguistic landscape and bear witness to the proliferation of fear, defamation, and exclusion in this ongoing battle against the coronavirus.

Reference

Curtin, M. L. (2015). Creativity in polyscriptal typographies in the linguistic landscape of Taipei. Social Semiotics, 25(2), 236–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2015.1010315

Related content

For extended coverage of the COVID-19 linguistic landscape, check out our COVID-19 archives at https://www.languageonthemove.com/covid-19/

Xiaofang Yao

Author Xiaofang Yao

Dr Xiaofang Yao is a Lecturer in TESOL at Federation University Australia. She is interested in linguistic and semiotic landscapes, sociolinguistics of multilingualism, and digital media discourse. Her current research project explores the intersection of language, culture and space, both physical and digital.

More posts by Xiaofang Yao

Join the discussion 62 Comments

  • Shiyi says:

    I feel terrible to read these negative info about my country, not only because it is relevant with my country’s reputation, but also these materials are true….This article shows us the influence of linguistic landscapes on publicity notice and warning. after reading, Through the article of public space signs, language landscape interprets the relationship between language and space, reflects various language phenomena in the real world, such as language conflict, language contact, language maintenance, language change and language family vitality, and reveals or explores the explicit or implicit language advantages, power relations and social status behind language use and choice.

  • Ross Geller says:

    I think that literacy has its own personal effect on every individual and in this world divided by various factors like religion, country, sex, beliefs and so on, the resultant products of these various subjective levels of literacies will have its various effects on the people. In this blog post, as I looked at the various signs, I tried to comprehend these signs according to my subjective perception of them and I believe every sign has its own energy or influence over the people who reads them. But the broader signs which were used in various places like fences and the usage of red color, signifies the collective common perception of “these” people and therefore the power of literacy is increased in this scenario and the worst part is that literacy has been used to have a negative impact on the people’s mindsets. The first “road block sign” especially, warning people in a very scary and sarcastic way is inhuman in nature especially when it’s a life or death situation, demanding unity, not discrimination.

  • WAA says:

    Thank you for sharing this article.
    It is really surprising for me to know about such “discrimination” against Chinese returnees. This reminds me of when COVID19 started its spread in my hometown, where people know each other very well. At that time, social bodies that were working to confront the disease used to publish the names of people infected by COVID19, on social media (Facebook, and WhatsApp groups). I do not know what the point of publishing the names was, but I am sure that it was not to fault them. However, people who had their names on the list became unwelcome people, as they did not follow the precautionary measures to protect themselves and others. This phenomenon existed at the early stages of COVID19 spread, when the number of patients was very limited, and people did not know much about it.

  • Clara says:

    Thank you for sharing the article with lots of information on how Chinese people do to prevent coronavirus.

    The COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019. During the peak time of the pandemic, I was still in Viet Nam and I hardly ever went outside as my company allowed me to work from home. However, I did follow all the news about this pandemic through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and current affairs every day. What impressed me the most was “thông điệp 5K” (the 5K rules) enacted by the Ministry of Health. Khẩu trang (face masks) – Khử khuẩn (disinfection) – Không tụ tập (no gathering) – Khai báo y tế (health declarations) – Khoảng cách (distancing) https://www.vietnamairport.vn/tuyhoaairport/vi/tin-tuc/tin-tuc-su-kien/thong-diep-5k were five things that I strongly believed all Vietnamese people remember whenever they mention about Covid-19. The message was conveyed effortlessly as all the rules start with the letter K and you could hear or read about them everywhere in Viet Nam. Besides, it was also interesting that Vietnamese artists even created the “5K dance” https://youtu.be/Lxkm8ifWB5g to spread out the message to more people in the community. The dance was soon becoming a trend that time and many people uploaded their videos doing this trend on Tiktok and Facebook.

    It is no doubt that these rules have made a great contribution to reducing new coronavirus cases in Viet Nam. Thanks to following them, none of my family members had covid-19 during the pandemic.

  • Haein says:

    I know and read lots of news about grassroots signs during the pandemic. In my writing, I mean I didn’t know that they installed the fences the entrances of residential building that infected people lived in China. I think the green fences extremely humiliate infected residents…

  • Purebear Jo says:

    Thank you for providing this provoking article!
    The red banner reminds me of a red sign of “외부인 출입금지” attached to the entrance of all nursing hospitals and facilities in Korea. (https://www.fnnews.com/news/202202051506552117) It means “No outsiders allowed.” Since the elderly are vulnerable to Covid-19, visits were completely prohibited in the beginning. Later, the government only allowed non-contact face-to-face visits due to resistance from family. Windows or screens should be between them. In the case of my friend’s grandmother, her chronic disease worsened in that period. The nurse even played a recording file directly to the grandmother’s ear recorded by the family. All the family felt sorry for not being able to hold hands for more than six months.

  • Minnie says:

    When the Covid-19 first hit the country, the government created slogans to advise people to stay home. However, people seem to ignore them. Then, the government changed to slogans that ask everyone to work together, to have their own responsibility in fighting against the pandemic. For example, “Mỗi người dân là một chiến sĩ; mỗi gia đình, thôn, tổ dân phố là một pháo đài chống dịch!” meaning “Every citizen is a soldier; every family, suburb, and neighbourhood is an anti-pandemic fortress!”. This slogan appears on daily news, first page of newspapers, and many social media platforms (https://www.facebook.com/baotuoitre/photos/a.10153588678435744/10160150130150744/?type=3). Vietnam is a country with a long history of fighting against many wars. In addition, throughout those resistance battles, the need for civilian support would be a prominent undercurrent in the Communist Party of Vietnam’s plans. Therefore, it has firmly built the spirit of great national unity of Vietnamese. Moreover, because Vietnamese culture is collectivistic, the government’s two tools, mass media and grassroots management, have been put to full use in the country’s pandemic preparedness. Although the government’s control plan clearly had an impact on people’s lives, the fact that the Vietnamese people cooperated with the government’s policies was the primary reason for Vietnam’s success in dealing with the first wave of COVID-19.

  • Hai Trang Tran says:

    The usage of “Taishanshan” on red banners left an impression on me as it not only serves as a “stay-at-home order” but it also emphasizes the serious consequences of going out and spreading the disease in a meaningful and funny way. When people read the sign, they can imagine the image of many graves of Covid-19 patients on the hills, which makes them scared and willing to stay at home.

    I lived in Vietnam during the peak time of Covid-19. Vietnam is located adjacent to China so Vietnam and China have a lot in common in using grassroots COVID-19-related signs to discourage their residents from going out and spreading the diseases. There is a popular slogan in Vietnam “Chịu khó cô đơn, cả nước mang ơn”, which means if you accept to stay lonely at home during Covid-19 pandemic, the whole country is grateful for you. This slogan underlines the seriousness of Covid – 19 and encourages people to follow the self – isolation rules in a positive way.

    Generally, a written and signed document carries more weight and validity than spoken words because people can keep reading and thinking about it to see both the hidden and obvious meanings behind.

  • Maya Zhang says:

    Thank you for sharing this article.
    I have to say that the red banners really remind me of a lot more of these at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. People all talked about these anti-epidemic slogans or even make jokes about them because some of them seemed rude. I remember there is one that says “今年上门,明天上坟” meaning if you visit someone this year, people will visit your grave next year. It catches people not only because of the rhythmic rhetorical device (门 men & 坟 fen) but also because it links between visiting and death. The reason why the red banners work in rural places is the lack of info about COVID-19. Most of the people who live in rural places are low educated. This red banner is an effective way to restrict and stop people from visiting.

  • Quynh says:

    That’s a wonderful article. This reminds me of how Vietnam, my home country, has proactively responded to the spread of COVID-19 from the very early stage. As one of its citizens, I take pride in how my fellow countrymen comply strictly with the rules of restraining the virus spread.
    During those hard times, many propaganda signs have been put on the streets and all over social media to call on people to wear masks, and my attention was caught by the sign which says: “Chống dịch như chống giặc. Đeo khẩu trang thường xuyên và đúng cách để phòng, chống dịch COVID-19 có hiệu quả” (https://vietnamnews.vn/life-style/653821/artists-create-posters-to-help-covid-19-fight.html). This can be translated as “The fight against the pandemic is a fight against foreign enemies. Wear masks regularly and appropriately to effectively prevent and control COVID-19”. The mask wear guidance is being featured in red capitalised letters, posing a strong effect to catch people’s attention as well as a warning of consequences for noncompliance. Above all, the residents have taken these words to heart and strictly adhered to the rule due to the direct call for action: Fighting the pandemic is like fighting the enemy on the top right corner. This traces back to the history of nearly 4,000 years that the Vietnamese struggled against foreign invasion and domination. This ingrained attitude that led to many victories in the past has been employed to combat this crisis, resulting in the country’s success in halting the pandemic.

  • Abdulla Zubayr Nafea says:

    Thanks for sharing this helpful article. This article reminds me about my own experience during the pick time of Covid 19 pandemic. My grandfather was infected by the virus and was admitted in the hospital. In that time outsiders or family members were not allowed to visit their patients. My parents tried several times to visit my grandfather but the hospital authorities didn’t allow it. When visiting the hospital, I noticed several Bengali slogans like (stay home, stay safe), (beware, remember you have a family) written on a red banner. This Chinese red banned reminds me about those. And I believe, this is a very productive way to raise social awareness because these slogans directly influence the mind and force a person to think about it twice. And also the colour red is a symbol of danger. Whenever we see any red sign , we stop and think before out next step.

    • Thank you, Abdulla! I hope your grandfather recovered and is back in good health again! Covid has been such a global generation defining experience as all our lives have been touched by it.

  • Tram says:

    The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on people’s lives, and it altered our lives permanently. Some of the most obvious changes are the safety measures that are still followed by many people. Before the pandemic, we rarely see people wearing face masks in public or using hand sanitizer. Now, it’s a different story. The differences in people’s daily habits remind me of a campaign in Viet Nam about safety measures during the pandemic. It is prompted by the Vietnamese Ministry of Health to prevent or at least reduce the spread of the virus. It is “thông điệp 5K” (5K rules): – Khẩu trang (face masks) – Khử khuẩn (disinfection) – Khoảng cách (distancing) – Khai báo y tế (health declarations) – Không tập trung (no gathering) (https://trungtamytetienyen.vn/thong-diep-5k-phong-chong-dai-dich-covid-19/). The campaign was extremely successful. I can guarantee that almost every Vietnamese knows and remembers it. The name, 5K, basically means there are five rules, and they all start with the letter K. All of the rules are also minimized to an extent that none of them exceed 4 words. The Vietnamese Ministry of Health also attempted to extend the campaign worldwide by translating the rules into many other languages (https://suckhoedoisong.vn/phong-dich-covid-19-bo-y-te-lan-toa-thong-diep-5k-bang-nhieu-thu-tieng-169192885.htm). Unfortunately, this breaks the linguistic features “5K” and becomes less memorable than the original version. Thus, those variation is not as successful as the one in Viet Nam.

  • Ziadah Ziad says:

    Xiaofang thank you for sharing!! You present such interesting linguistic landscapes and analyses. They provoke new questions like, is a negative sentence effectively stronger than the positive one? How to get rid of fear and inflammatory sentences in producing a linguistic landscape, especially in such a critical situation. How can we (humans) exercise putting more love, bravery, or humor in them? If I were the banner makers, I would write “Love yourself, love your family, stay where you are!” Do you think my banner will work in your village?

    In Indonesia, we have a lot of problems with rubbish and plastics, people are often littering. Many banners containing fear (to God and to the Evil Spirit) and hate speech, have been created to deal with this problem. The one that I found not far from my village literally means “God, please make the people who throw the rubbish here completely poor” and “Do not throw your rubbish here, some were possessed by evil spirits.” The place with the first banner was cleaner than the second one.

    Another thing that comes to my mind while reading your article is about “red”. As far as my concerned, red in Chinese culture is associated with happiness, it is also the color of the Chinese Communist Party, is red also culturally linked with anger, hatred, or oppression?

    • Thank you, Ziadah! I love your alternative banner suggestion! We’ve seen so much focus on fear and exclusion, and so few messages of care. As someone else said, the pandemic has mostly been framed as a war and that has probably done more harm than good.

  • Dung says:

    I want to reply to you with my comment on my previous post, but I don’t know how to do, so I will leave a comment here. Yes, the colour-coded zones still exist in Vietnam because of the severity of COVID-19. The government thinks that it is effective in controlling the pandemic, especially in some big cities such as: Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi. However, we hope we can be back to our normal soon.

  • Dung says:

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnam divides into four zones (red, orange, yellow, and green) based on the epidemic’s severity. Red color stands for high risk, whereas green stands for no risk. In each residential area, there are some grassroots COVID-19-related signs that announce the severity of the epidemic in that area to passers and its residents. One of the grassroots COVID-19-related signs that caught my attention is the one near my home in Vietnam. Here is the link for the photo: https://vov.vn/xa-hoi/tin-24h/2663-tinh-thanh-la-vung-xanh-theo-danh-gia-cap-do-dich-covid-19-899739.vov?fbclid=IwAR3r78dQ32uRRFIm0rU1M-99N8wcRULAsmtayVSymXDRbNXfQ2ZU9HDc7bw
    This is my translation of the sign:
    “ COVID PREVENTION COMMITTEE
    PHUOC TIEN WARD
    GREEN ZONE PROTECTION
    (NO EPIDEMIC AREA)
    FOR THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF MINE, YOURS, AND THE COMMUNITY
    PLEASE DON’T ENTER THIS AREA
    THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING!”
    As shown in the sign, all of the letters are in upper case to emphasize the importance of the announcement. Because this sign is for the area with no risk, the background is green. Besides, “GREEN ZONE PROTECTION (NO EPIDEMIC AREA)” is written in a bigger size to help the readers notice this piece of information first. The words used in the sign are useful in raising readers’ awareness and responsibility when it mentions the health and safety of the announcer, the readers, and the community. During the pandemic, there was a Vietnamese hand-washing song that went viral over the world. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtulL3oArQw

  • Suyeon says:

    Thanks to this thought-provoking blog, I got some insight into the social and affective impact of some clever but stigmatizing COVID-19-related signs in China.
    It is impressive that the Chinese government created the signs in a linguistic way that shows the word play on the last syllable of the key words 山([ʂan]) which support the powerful message ‘don’t go out’ in order to prevent people from being infected.
    The red banners also captured my attention with the rhythmic rhetorical device (村 [tsʰʊən] and 孙 [sʊən]), but also its ideological propaganda. It is quite shocking that the Chinese government deliberately put shame on returning people, making via the message “returning village with disease, what an unfilial child you are”. Considering Confucianism is an absolute value and patriarchal culture is strongly entrenched in China, labelling one person as an unfilial child is hugely stigmatizing. I think this kind of message undermines people’s basic human right to live in dignity and visit their own families and communities. It is inappropriate to conclude that by visiting their parents they will be necessarily infecting them. We know that many elderly people died alone without seeing their loved ones due to covid travel restrictions.
    I hope COVID-19-related signs are made with creative linguistic and semiotic resources and their meaning should not humiliate or discriminate against people who belong to their society.

    • Thank you, Suyeon! I think China was not unique in this. Many countries struggled to get the balance right between constructive public health messages on the one hand and exclusion and stigmatisation on the other

    • Xiaofang says:

      Hi Suyeon, thank you for the comment! I would not generalise that “the Chinese government” is the sign maker in these cases, because these signs were sourced from the social media platform – Weibo, and based on clues in the images, they were most likely created by villages or local residential committees.
      I think literacy is also a key issue here – the messages were perhaps purposefully curated to appeal to the fear of villagers so that they would be more likely to comply with the restrictions. Maybe this is an “effective” strategy to alert people with limited literacy? although the exclusionary ideologies implied wherein are not acceptable.

  • Tu Nguyen says:

    Thank you for providing me with such an intriguing article about the creative use of language to raise people’s awareness and take action on preventing the spread of Covid 19. The eye-catching banners in this article remind me of the use of various propaganda-style posters, as the key tools to raise awareness, provide needed respite, and bolster spirits amid the pandemic in my home country, Vietnam.
    http://caobangtv.gov.vn/vi/photos/tranh-tuyen-truyen-co-dong/tranh-co-dong-phong-chong-covid19-6/167.html
    The poster in the link above is an example of one of COVID-19 related signs that has caught my attention. Along with clear messaging on encouraging people to wear masks to effectively prevent the spread of virus, this poster declares the slogan “chống dịch như chống giặc” (translated into English as “fighting the COVID-19 pandemic like fighting the enemy”). This motto reminds passersby and drivers of the power of their nation during the wars of national liberation against French colonizers and later American imperialists. As a result, it has contributed to shaping community attitudes about COVID-19 in Vietnam.

    • Thanks, Tu! It’s interesting how many countries around the world metaphorically framed the pandemic as a war. I think that might have paved the way for the politicisation of the pandemic we saw in so many places …

  • Kelly says:

    Thank you for sharing this article!

    Through this reading, the red banner catches my attention. Its concise and powerful language style has played a role in a wide range of calls to action. In China, anti-epidemic slogans can be seen on red banners at any time in townships, streets and traffic card points.

    After I read this article, another anti-epidemic slogan written on the red banner came to my mind. It says“新年宅家不出门,健康生活最温馨”. It means”stay at home in the new year, a healthy life is the warmest”. I saw this red banner when I left my community back to Australia in early 2020. At that time, it was the traditional Chinese Spring Festival. However, in order to block the source of infection and cut off the transmission route, a city with a population of 10 million called Wuhan was “closed”. The movement of people in urban and rural areas across the country has stopped, 1.4 billion Chinese people have taken active actions, from cities to villages against the tradition of visiting relatives and friends during the Spring Festival, only stay at home.

  • Ian says:

    Thanks for sharing this article!

    What a throwback to peak COVID when everything shut down for the first time in my life and there was completely no traffic on the streets.
    What was interesting is that colour coordination was used to determine safe areas – similar to traffic light colours. As a society, we have grown up thinking that red is the colour for alert/danger, yellow is moderate and green is safe. This is similar to the smarttraveller website for Australian travellers who want to go overseas (red is do not travel, yellow is consider travel and green is safe). I found the red banner really interesting and it’s a bit sad that returnees from specific villages were frowned upon as they were considered as people that were infectious. I remember in England quite vividly that the message was ‘stay at home’, ‘protect the NHS’ and this was everywhere on the Premier League soccer games I was watching. So these platforms such as sports games even had communication about COVID to stay at home and maybe those who didn’t were frowned upon.

    • Thanks, Ian! It’s interesting how different different societies reacted from the tough lock-downs in China and even Australia to virtually no lockdown at all in UK etc.

  • Haein says:

    Thank you for sharing this interesting article! I didn’t know that those things happened during pandemic. There are two signs which are interesting to me. One is a red banner, and the other one is a green fence.
    Written language is used in the red banner as a semiotic resource. The banner makes returnees feel afraid of returning to the village by making them think they are culprits or unfilial children in the Chinese community because they are considered potential infected people. Moreover, it indirectly intimidates the returnees to not return to the village.
    Furthermore, the green fences use location/spatial arrangement as semiotic resources. It was installed at the entrance of a residential building. The residents and visitors could be overwhelmed as a sign of infected people, even though the fences were not solidly made. For this reason, the green fence might humiliate infected residents and was considered a symbol of social discrimination.

  • brownies says:

    The red banner catches my attention instantly because of the smart use of rhythms and wordplay that is fun and novel to read. The sentence resembles the format of songs or poems with a catchy flow and the repetition of similar phonemes at the end, thus generating a strong impression at first glance. Written language differs from spoken one due to the lack of intonation and gestures, so the addition of rhythms can make up for them and seize the readers’ attention despite being plain, toneless words (Negrete, 2021). Moreover, the negative connotation behind the message arouses strong emotions in readers, leading to deeper memorisation of the slogan.

    I remember in Vietnam, people took a popular song and alter its lyrics into methods of avoiding COVID. But different from the negative banner, it involves positive messages to promote responsibilities, word repetition (such as “xoa”) and rhythms at the end of consecutive sentences (“giác” and “tác”) to make it melodic and catchy! Vietnamese people love it and memorise the lyrics unconsciously, thus knowing how to avoid COVID. (The song: https://youtu.be/NPraJZ5eWWc).

    Reference:
    Negrete, A. (2021). Remembering rhythm and rhyme: memorability of narratives for science communication. Geoscience Communication, 4, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-4-1-2021.

  • Librarising says:

    As someone from wuhan where the first covid outbreak happened, I can definitely relate to those who were and still are discriminated and marginalized by the discriminatory discourse shown above. It’s quite frustrating to see that the only thing changed is just the target group, from wuhanese to people from other regions, and then to people of different age and occupations etc.
    Here’s a banner I saw on weibo that caught my attention https://m.weibo.cn/6242534353/4789302719943882. It says “新冠疫苗,健康环保;新冠病毒,见他就跑”,it means “Covid vaccine, healthy and environmentally friendly; coronavirus runs on the sight of it”, it rhymes with the words 苗(miao),保(bao),and 跑(pao)to stress the effectiveness of the vaccine and encourage people to get vaccinated. However, there’s a lack of grasp of publicity and target. Many, if not most, of the confirmed cases in China have been vaccinated, the effectiveness is not quiet like how it’s promoted in this banner, not to mention that there’s also a large number of people who just aren’t suitable for the vaccine.

  • Ayesha Akber says:

    Wow! I almost forgot what I had been through during the peak of covid-19 in 2020-2021. Bad memories disappear from mind very easily. After the reading, things came back in mind and helped me to flashback. Those rumors and insults were terrible. I can remember what happened in my town. There were police cars everywhere, guarding the roads , lots of questioning, charging people with fines, bashing arrogant and stubborn people who rejected staying at home, and so on and so forth… But this blog overwhelmed my mind! the red banner stuff was what I found really really amazing! The quote, ‘ unfilial child’ was something that makes one easily heartbroken but not those who really don’t care to be dehumanized or devalued. Afterall, the pandemic brought so much cost in people’s lives. Financially devastated, poor village comers were absolutely helpless during that time. Where they didn’t get enough food to survive healthily, let alone caring enough to stay safe from coronavirus! Some facts are inexplicable regarding the pandemic situations.
    There was a meme-poster hanged around my neighbourhood that caught my attention:
    Two film characters from an Indian film; The hero of the movie is swab testing the heroin by cuddling her from the back.(haha!)

  • Hakunamatata says:

    Most of the creative signs and banners mentioned in this article appeared to be located at village entrances or city avenues. Such eye-catching spots highlight the prime objective to promote the avoidance of people’s mobility.

    Interestingly, some other slogans in a food market in China caught my attention.
    http://ha.news.cn/photo/newsphoto/2022-04/02/c_1128523811.htm
    The first image on the site wrote “香菇蘑菇金針菇 接種疫苗莫含糊”, meaning “Shiitake mushrooms, white mushrooms and golden needle mushrooms. Never hesitate your COVID vaccinations”. To catch people’s attention, the slogan rhymes with words菇[Gū] and 糊[Hú]. However, while cooking ingredients and vaccinations are so absurdly unrelated, this slogan as appeared in a food market highlights China’s eager intention to promote COVID vaccinations. Although many students and employees of state-owned enterprises have already exerted pressure on vaccinations, some other people still doubt the safety and effectiveness of the locally developed vaccine. For instance, vaccines could also be a political trick in regions like Hong Kong. After the Anti-Extradition Law Movement, locals must take three doses of vaccines to enter places like universities and cinemas and have all their tracks recorded through a “vaccine-passport” for government monitor.

    • Thank you, Hakunamatata! so fascinating to see how politicised vaccination has become in so many places, and how signs make the most unlikely connections to get people to act in their own best interest…

  • Kat says:

    The content of the article is fascinatingly delivered. The linguistic landscape can be said to be applied in many places in different ways in the process of controlling the spread of COVID-19. Coincidentally, the measures mentioned in this article were also applied in Vietnam during the lockdown. Especially when using signs, most of them were coloured red and had bold letters to emphasise the emergence. Signs were seen everywhere. While China emphasised the lack of medical care as well as raising people’s awareness, Vietnam chose to focus on the responsibility of citizens to society. Specifically, at every entrance of the building where I was staying, there were signs saying that “Staying at home is patriotic” or “If you love your country, stay at home”.
    Apart from that, social organizations, along with celebrities and influencers, also launched a social media campaign encouraging people to stay home by using rhymes to create their own melodic slogans. For example, “Tôi là Nội, tôi ở nhà không đi Hà Nội”, which means “My name is Noi, I stay home and don’t go to Hanoi.” Here, like the Chinese sign that used the last syllable “Shan”, the Vietnamese used the homophone of “oi” to make the slogan rhyming and catchy.

    • Thanks, Kat! This reminds me that there was a really famous Vietnamese hand-washing song that went viral internationally early in the pandemic. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the details – do you know what i mean?

  • Randomcastmember says:

    Personally, I found it is very interesting that the the variety of language use and signs in Covid-19 controlled areas are creatively and differently used, but to signal the common goal: prevent the spread of the virus. I noticed that figure 1, the roadblock signs was announced in 2020, the early outbreak of the Covid-19. I feel that they mentioned about Taishangshan (lifting the bodies up the hill or the possibility of losing life) because at that time they did not have Covid-19 vaccines, plus people worldwide still had not clear understanding of new threat. Hence, preventing people from going out of the village would probably their only choice to save life.

    In my country, from 2020-2021, when the vaccines had not yet arrived to the country, the government also campaigned this phrase “อยู่บ้าน หยุดเชื้อ เพื่อชาติ” meaning “Stay home, prevent the spread, for the sake of the nation” which many people said it sounded too nationalism. Later people, especially from social media, changed the phrase into, “อยู่บ้านหยุดเชื้อ เพื่อหมอ เพื่อทุกคน”, meaning “stay home, prevent the spread, for the benefits of doctors and everyone” (because we lost a numbers of medical practitioners who treated Covid-19 infected patients (please refer to the phrase https://twitter.com/political_drama/status/1240985193910960134 ). I agreed with Dr Xiaofang that the pandemic did create a new linguistics landscape across the world.

    • Thank you, Randomcastmember! You are right that the Covid-related linguistic landscape has changed immensely over the past 2-3 years; at the moment, the interesting signs (and debates) seem to relate mostly to mask wearing. It’s interesting that, in your context, an early slogan politicizing the pandemic was changed to a less nationalist one; in many other contexts, it seems to have been the other way round and the pandemic has become more and more politicized …

  • Tviq says:

    In some areas affected by COVID-19, green fences, yellow warning signs and red and white police cordon are everywhere. These signs warn people that there is a danger nearby and do not approach. The language on the signs is mostly in a warning tone, and near the signs there is usually a letter or explanation from the government. The language in the letter is usually in the form of narration and persuasion, persuading people to stay away from these places. In these areas, there are also signs such as red exclamation and so on. These signs will bring some sense of crisis and anxiety to the society, but generally it is beneficial to the people nearby.

    • Thanks, Tviq! Can you tell us a bit more where you’ve seen these signs? Are they grassroots signs or official signs put up by a government agency such as the police?

  • Brynn Quick says:

    I would TOTALLY research this! I had completely failed to realise that the SpongeBob meme was what started it all!

  • Emily says:

    This is such an interesting description of the different signs, both through how they show the approaches to covid and social responsibility in China, and how the language is used to be humorous or make the message stronger. I am living in Japan at the moment and there are many signs that also use word play. This is one example: https://ryukyushimpo.jp/photo/entry-1121745.html

    As background, many kanji characters in Japanese have multiple pronunciations, and many words with similar pronunciations will conversely have different kanji and meanings. This gives wide potential for word play, and numbers are one common means of this. Words and phrases can be created by arranging different numbers and using one of their different pronunciations. The sign in the article says 5+6+7=18. The mathematical equation stands on its own, and would normally be read “go tasu roku tasu nana wa jyuuhachi”. By leaving out the tasu (the pronunciation of the plus sign) and using alternative and shortened pronunciations of the numbers in the equation, it can be read as “co ro na wa i ya” which basically translates as “corona sucks”.

  • Brynn says:

    I know, right?! It’s only come about in the last few years, so it’s quite a recent script development.

  • Sharkie says:

    The fences used in the residential building and the roadblocks used in controlled zones caught my attention. In my perspective, these materials used for different fences indicated how serious COVID is happening in certain areas. A glance at the green fence, the sturdiness may not be strong enough. However, its design made it difficult for others to enter. Semiotically, I think it was trying to discourage people either from entering or exiting the residential building under no circumstances. In terms of the roadblocks used in the controlled zones, they implied less restrictions since limited entry could still be possible. Linguistically, the roadblock message was implying that the zone can still be controlled at the moment, but precautions must be taken into consideration.

    • Xiaofang says:

      Thank you for this nuanced perspective! So signs regulate the space and are indexical of different levels of restrictions (and thus severity of the pandemic).

  • Brynn says:

    Fascinating! One sign that I saw circulating among my American friends on facebook was #3 on this list (https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/face-mask-signs-at-stores). It was primarily aimed at “Karens” who would harass store employees during periods of mask mandates. What is interesting to me about this particular sign is the use of tHiS tYpE oF sCrIpT (I’m not sure if it has a name?) which, in American English at least, is used to convey an ignorant-sounding voice. This sign highlights the (still ongoing) deep division between Americans who comply with mask mandates and those who say that the mandates are unconstitutional. There was/is much less government intervention in the US re: covid safety measures, so homemade signs like this highlight the fact that individual people/businesses often were/are left to their own devices on how best to control the pandemic.

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