Jan Buts
The Concept of Community from a Global Perspective, edited by Niall Bond
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004697324_010
Abstract
Community is a travelling concept that easily adapts to rapidly changing circumstances. This article first uses the Coronavirus Corpus to examine the use of community in online media reporting on the spread of covid- 19. Particular attention is paid to the frequently used phrases community transmission and herd immunity. The latter is a more common term for community immunity, and expresses group resistance to a particular pathogen achieved through either widespread infection or vaccination. The vocabulary used to describe this situation is further analysed in terms of the declared equivalence, in conditions of crisis and contagion, between human and animal social bonds. The article then queries a section of the Genealogies of Knowledge Corpus containing canonical scholarly works, in search of a similar linguistic response to descriptions of crisis seemingly unrelated to the present predicament. In particular, patterns around the concept of community traced from the work of Girard and Freud provide insights complementary to those gained from the earlier analysis of media discourse. Overall, the article illustrates the benefits of a corpus-based approach for the purpose of conceptual research.
