ABSTRACT
This contribution approaches the COVID-19 pandemic not as a biological, medical or social reality but from a discourse analysis perspective. It focuses on the year 2020 when uncertainty was highest in the population. After underlining the “discursive saturation” in the media that the pandemic provoked, the chapter insists on two of the discursive resources that were used by authorities to respond to the anxiety of the world’s populations: the word of experts and the translation of the pandemic into figures. In both cases, these responses prove insufficient: the word of the experts is heterogeneous, and the figures are based on criteria that are debated. In addition, the existence of digital networks that disseminate information that is different from that produced by the well-established channels has fostered uncertainty. The pandemic has also allowed new discursive practices to emerge. Two examples are mentioned: websites entirely devoted to presenting tables of statistics and, in France, a daily briefing by a government official.
