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In:Register and Discourse through the Lens of Corpus Linguistics
Edited by Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, Dolores González-Álvarez and Esperanza Rama-Martínez
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 127] 2026
► pp. 123–157

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Chapter 5
The function of “normal” in the U.S. COVID-19 news discourse

An interplay between phraseology and quotation marks

 | Charles University
Published online: 24 March 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.127.05nad
Abstract
This chapter examines the function of the adjective and noun “normal” in the U.S. news discourse on the coronavirus/COVID-19. Adopting a pragmatic and corpus linguistic perspective, it shows how quotation marks work in conjunction with surrounding lexicogrammatical patterns to express the semantic preference and the “local” semantic prosody of “normal” (Tribble, 2000; Sinclair, 2004; Hunston, 2007; Gutzman & Stei, 2011; Partington, 2014; Meibauer, 2015). In U.S. pandemic news, “normal” functioned to express dialogic attitudes such as uncertainty, voice plurality and evaluation, predominantly negative. These attitudes targeted various aspects of “normal”, including its definition, existence and the prospect of returning to a prepandemic “normal”. Dialogic prosody is consistent with general features of news reporting, particularly news values and an emphasis on negative and disruptive events (White, 1997; Bednarek & Caple, 2017).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research on pandemic discourse
  • 3.Semantic preference and semantic prosody
  • 4.The function of quotation marks, partial direct quotes
    and scare quotes
  • 5.Data
  • 6.Methodology
  • 7.Findings
    • 7.1The occurrence of “normal”/normal in the CC and in the NOW corpus
    • 7.2Collocational patterns with “normal”
    • 7.3Colligational patterns with “normal”
    • 7.4Semantic preference of “normal”
      • 7.4.1The multiword unit * * “normal” *
      • 7.4.2The semantic set Definition of “normal”
      • 7.4.3The semantic set Degree of “normal”
    • 7.5Semantic prosody of “normal”
      • 7.5.1Expressing different degrees of (un)certainty
      • 7.5.2Indicating a plurality of voices
      • 7.5.3Expressing a negative evaluation
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Summary and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (58)
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