This study investigates the personal and collective responses to COVID-19, as it is described in personal stories and newspaper reports and examines the social and economic impact of the pandemic on different societies Although some studies have been done on the impact of COVID-19, these studies focus on epidemiology, the importance of language diversity and reflections on the pandemic None of the studies so far have focused specifically on the impact the coronavirus has had on different societies because of the global lockdown and restrictions on people’s movements This study attempts to address this gap in the literature by focusing on how the language used in personal stories and newspaper reports reveal the impact of COVID-19 on different societies by investigating how self-isolation and lockdown measures is leading to mental health breakdown in individuals and affecting wider social and economic collapse Prior literature (Gortner and Pennebaker, 2003) suggests that the media generally parallel society’s psychological response to traumatic events making newspapers an important collective resource similar to personal stories The scale of the pandemic is such that it has been likened to a situation of war In this climate, where the response to the pandemic is analogous to fighting a war, it was interesting to see what effect the enforced lockdown has on people’s mental health well-being and what priorities the media focus on Smith, Anderson-Hanley, Langrock, and Compas (2005) have shown that language use in descriptions of traumatic experiences can shed insight into successful and unsuccessful coping strategies I have therefore chosen to look at two different countries, Sri Lanka and Britain in order to investigate the following research questions: (1) Is self-isolation due to COVID-19 having an effect on mental health in Britain? And (2) What are the priorities of different countries during the crisis as evident in newspaper reports? To answer these two research questions, I have collected a small corpus of personal stories from Britain and two small corpora of newspaper reports from Britain and Sri Lanka over a span of one month The data was analysed using corpus linguistics methodology such as keyword analysis of the two newspaper reports using AntConc (Anthony, 2019) and the personal stories were analysed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) (Pennebaker, 2015) The findings from LIWC shows that the enforced self-isolation is leading to mental health breakdown but that there are also positive emotions of the desire to help and solidarity with others The analysis of the news reports show that Britain’s priorities are centered on the government’s handling of the crisis and the economy whereas Sri Lankan newspapers focus on educating people about the dangers of COVID-19
“I feel like death on legs”: COVID-19 isolation and mental health