Professor Zhiguo Xie, in collaboration with Dr. Cindy Xinquan Jiang from the Office of International Affairs, has been awarded a grant from the Global Arts + Humanities COVID-19 Special Grants Initiative for their research on political discourse during COVID-19 and its impact on participants of international education.

Language, by itself and as an embodiment of culture, is a most powerful symbolic system that people use to design, create, and control discourses, which, in turn, frame public beliefs, attitudes, values, etc. Therefore, Drs. Xie and Jiang believe language and culture belong at the core of our understanding of the humanistic impact of the on-going COVID-19 crisis. With the support of the grant, they will conduct a comparative and interdisciplinary investigation of the (socio-)linguistic and (socio-)cultural dimensions of political discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic. They will also survey how participants of international education, who form a socially and culturally vulnerable group, are affected by political discourses in both their home and host countries. Toward these ends, they will utilize a variety of theoretical tools available from their respective fields and employ experimental methods that engage the community of (prospective) participants of international education at OSU and beyond.