• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.1-30
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• 2020

The present study examines language used to talk about the global coronavirus pandemic during a three-month period of movement control order in Malaysia. More specifically, a corpus of online letters to the editor of a local popular national newspaper was collected during the time in which the official quarantine instruction was initiated, resulting in a total of 303 online letters written by Malaysians that were analyzed through use of corpus linguistics techniques. For this purpose, the latest version of #LancsBox 5.0 (Brezina et al., 2020) is used to analyze patterns of language surrounding the portrayal of Covid-19 and further visualizing them by use of collocation networks. Findings present 25 statistically significant collocates that share an interesting relationship in revealing what the letters are about and thus, reflecting how Malaysians perceive and receive news about the pandemic during this time. Recurring topics and expressions include describing the virus in terms of metaphorical use of language (Covid-19 does not discriminate), preparing for an economic fallout (Prihatin Economic Stimulus Package), and preference to associate Covid-19 as a pandemic (impacts of the Covid19 pandemic) rather than an outbreak (first/second/third wave of the outbreak). Implications of the study resonates with findings from Azizan et al. (2020) where constructions of positive discourse among Malaysian writers may reflect the culture and society that make up the nation.