Abstract

The Covid-19 (acronym for the coronavirus disease of 2019) pandemic negatively affected the world economy akin to the global financial crisis of 2008, leading to the revival of the debate about neoliberal rationalities. Although many nations attempted to contain the pandemic through a public goods approach, the authors argue that these state interventions concealed neoliberalism by advancing its governmentalities. Further, they use Norman Fairclough's (1992) interdiscursivity to describe how in Kenya, The Standard newspaper's coverage of the government interventions was dialogical, euphemising neoliberalism through content that seemed to advocate state welfarism while advocating for the free market at the same time. The interdiscursive analysis was enriched by using Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's (1985) concept of chains of equivalence and difference to explain the power relations behind the euphemisation of neoliberalism. The authors also argue that the invisible free-market mechanism becomes hegemonic when it takes over populist demands through the transformation of the chains of difference – the antagonism against neoliberalism – into chains of equivalence, the points of similarity between neoliberalism and people's welfare demands. For the current study, the authors selected articles on Covid-19 that appeared in the Standard, chiefly those written on policy issues and published during the early period of the pandemic. Two regular themes were analysed to illustrate the euphemisation of neoliberalism, namely, corruption watchdogism and unemployment narratives. The authors use interdiscursivity to illustrate how these two themes euphemise neoliberalism.

摘要

Covid-19（2019 年冠状病毒病的首字母缩写）大流行对世界经济产生了类似于 2008 年全球金融危机的负面影响，导致关于新自由主义理性的辩论重新开始。尽管许多国家试图通过公共物品的方式来遏制这一流行病，但作者认为，这些国家干预措施通过推进政府治理来掩盖新自由主义。此外，他们使用 Norman Fairclough (1992) 的跨话语性来描述在肯尼亚，The Standard报纸对政府干预的报道是对话式的，通过似乎在提倡国家福利主义同时提倡自由市场的内容委婉地表达了新自由主义。通过使用 Ernesto Laclau 和 Chantal Mouffe (1985) 的等价链和差异链概念来解释新自由主义委婉语背后的权力关系，丰富了话语间分析。作者还认为，当无形的自由市场机制通过将差异链——对新自由主义的对抗——转变为等价链、新自由主义与人民福利需求之间的相似点来接管民粹主义需求时，它就会成为霸权。对于当前的研究，作者选择了出现在标准，主要是关于政策问题的文章，并在大流行初期发表。分析了两个常规主题来说明新自由主义的委婉说法，即腐败监督和失业叙事。作者使用跨话语性来说明这两个主题如何委婉地表达新自由主义。