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The Pandemic in Britain The COVID 19 Pandemic Series 1st Edition Creaven
A clearly written, must-read piece of work for anybody interested in how a pandemic not only affected our lives but also our own language. An invaluable resource to discover the power of metaphor in unveiling human thinking and creativity in different types of public discourse (health, political, and informational) and contexts (social media, advertising).
Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano, The University of Zaragoza, Spain
With their book, Collins and Koller fill an important gap in the vast literature about Covid-19. They provide readers with an original, critically thorough, and yet accessible, inquiry into the way language has been used in communicating the pandemic, highlighting the impact it generally has in the perception of science in society.
Massimiliano Demata , University of Turin, Italy
COVID-19 has prompted much scholarship in the fields of linguistics and discourse analysis. But Viral Language is unique in that the authors use multiple points of entry to investigate the way the pandemic is represented in various types of public discourses. This book not only provides a thorough appraisal of COVID-19 as discursive construct and social experience, but also initiates the reader into numerous types of linguistic analysis, from speech acts, transitivity and multimodality, to metaphor and lexical innovation. A very valuable book for scholars and students.
Fiona Rossette-Crake , Paris Nanterre University, France
VIRAL LANGUAGE
Viral Language considers a range of different types of public communication and their discussion of the Covid-19 pandemic as a way to investigate health communication. The authors introduce and apply a range of approaches informed by linguistic theory to investigate experiences of the pandemic across a variety of public contexts. In doing so, they demonstrate how experiences of health and illness can be shaped by political messaging, scientific research, news articles and advertising.
Through a series of case studies of Covid-related texts, the authors consider aspects of language instruction, information and innovation, showcasing the breadth of topics that can be studied as part of health communication. Furthermore, each case study provides practical guidance on how to carry out investigations using social media texts, how to analyse metaphor, how to track language innovation and how to work with text and images.
Viral Language is critical reading for postgraduate and upper undergraduate students of applied linguistics and health communication.
Luke C. Collins is a Senior Research Associate with the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science at Lancaster University, UK.
Veronika Koller is Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, UK.
VIRAL LANGUAGE
Analysing the Covid-19 Pandemic in Public Discourse
The right of Luke C. Collins and Veronika Koller to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-367-75668-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-75666-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-16345-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003163459
Typeset in Sabon by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
2.1 Number of tweets for each profile over the course of 2020 23
5.1 Distribution of participant roles according to publication 116
6.1 Relative frequency values for ‘covidiot’ by ten-day intervals 137
7.1 Corona beer meme, 29 January 2020 155
7.2 Still from Stella Artois’s ‘Help a restaurant’ commercial 173
TABLES
2.1 Number of tweets for each profile for each month of 2020 22
2.2 Frequency and percentage of tweets containing advice-giving utterances 25
2.3 Frequency and percentage of tweets containing images/videos, hyperlinks and hashtags 30
3.1 Semantic fields, source domains (with the number of examples) and metaphoric expressions (word stems indicated by an asterisk) 57
3.2 Most prominent semantic fields 59
4.1 Frequency and relative frequency (per million) values for the most frequent items in three corpora 81
4.2 Most frequent 5-grams from three corpora 82
4.3 Keywords in the CORD-19 corpus 85
4.4 Concordance lines for ‘viral’ in CORD-19 86
4.5 Concordance lines for ‘viral’ in enTenTen20 87
4.6 Collocates for ‘virus’ in CORD-19 90
4.7 Collocates for ‘virus’ in enTenTen20 91
5.1 Three lines of meaning in the clause 106
5.2 Frequency of ‘the science’ and related terms in the NOW corpus 109
5.3 U.K. news sources with the highest number of occurrences of ‘the science’ 110
5.4 Frequency of ‘the science’ according to participant roles 114
x Tables
5.5 Frequency of process types
7.1 Sales and financial performance of the world’s largest beer companies during 2020 (sources: AB InBev, 2020; Carlsberg Group, 2020; Heineken N.V., 2020) 154
7.2 Overview of the data 161
7.3 Extract from the Budweiser video transcript 162
ABBREVIATIONS
ADS The American Dialect Society
AoIR Association for Internet Researchers
API Application Programming Interface
BAAL The British Association for Applied Linguistics
CDC The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
CLAWS Constituent Likelihood Automatic Word-tagging System
CSR corporate social responsibility
DHSC The Department of Health and Social Care (U.K.)
DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals
FDA U.S. Food and Drug Association
HHS The Department of Health and Human Services (U.S.)
MI mutual information
MIP metaphor identification procedure
MWUs multiword units
NHS National Health Service (U.K.)
OED Oxford English Dictionary
POS part of speech
SAGE U.K. Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies
STS science and technology studies
USAS UCREL Semantic Analysis System
WHO World Health Organization
wpm words per million
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful to Pernille Bogø Jørgensen, Gavin Brookes and Bernard De Clerck for their helpful comments on the draft versions of individual chapters.
Images taken from an advertising campaign from Stella Artois and reproduced with the kind permission of Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev).
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 The language of Covid-19
In this book, we are concerned with health and illness as universal human conditions that can be studied in language. More specifically, we write this in the midst of a global health crisis, which we position as our central focus and as a way to demonstrate some of the many topics and concerns that can be included in studies of health communication. The Covid-19 pandemic was confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020, on the basis that the impact of a novel coronavirus had transcended national boundaries and necessitated a “whole-of-society” approach (WHO, 2020a). In a press briefing, the director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, demonstrated his keen awareness of the importance of language, acknowledging the significance of the word ‘pandemic’ and its potential for causing fear or, conversely, leading to complacency if misused. Likewise, the WHO was particular in its adoption of an official name for the virus, “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)”, and for the disease it causes, “COVID-19” (as a form of coronavirus disease identified in 2019). While both were official labelling terms, ‘Covid-19’ or simply ‘Covid’ became more widely accepted. Recognising concerns about the implied association of the name of the virus with the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic (2002–2004), particularly since this was also first detected in China, the WHO provided the following statement:
From a risk communications perspective, using the name SARS can have unintended consequences in terms of creating unnecessary fear for some
populations, especially in Asia which was worst affected by the SARS outbreak in 2003.
For that reason and others, WHO has begun referring to the virus as “the virus responsible for COVID-19” or “the COVID-19 virus” when communicating with the public.
(WHO, 2020b)
The WHO’s concerns about the naming of the virus and “unintended consequences” were arguably borne out in the hate speech and Sinophobic views that were inflamed by then-President Donald Trump’s label of the “China/ Chinese Virus” in March 2020 (as discussed by Lee, 2021). Lee (2021) argues that critical approaches informed by linguistic analysis can offer a way to expose strategies of online abuse and that by understanding how those originate and spread, we can better counteract them.
Similarly, there have been legitimate concerns about the spread of misinformation and disinformation1 with respect to Covid-19 countermeasures. In the context of a global pandemic, it is all the more important that health communication is informed, accurate and timely. Receiving up-todate and accurate health information has been shown to be related to lower reported levels of stress and anxiety ( Wang et al., 2020), while belief in dis/ misinformation is negatively associated with protective behaviours (Hornik et al., 2021). In February 2021, Professor Stephen Powis, the national medical director for NHS England, rebuked the (unproven) advice on coping with ‘long Covid’ provided on the blog of Gwyneth Paltrow, an actor and businesswoman, emphasising that “[l]ike the virus, misinformation carries across borders and it mutates and it evolves” ( Weaver, 2021). A Reuters Institute report on the main types, sources and claims of Covid-19 dis/misinformation found that the majority (88%) of instances appeared on social media and that while false information from politicians, celebrities and other prominent figures made up just 20% of instances, their content was highly influential – accounting for 69% of engagement (i.e., likes, comments and shares) (Brennan et al., 2020). The largest category of dis/misinformation claims related to the actions or policies of public authorities (governments and international bodies, such as the UN) (39%), demonstrating the significance of having clear, accessible messages from institutional bodies. In fact, the dissemination of information about the pandemic has demanded that social media platforms update their guidance on combating dis/misinformation, and as early as March 2020, certain social media posts from Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro were removed from Facebook and Twitter, respectively, on this basis (BBC, 2020).
In addition to the need to prioritise information that ensures the public’s well-being, increased monitoring and state-imposed restrictions are entangled with testing rates and compliance on the part of the public. At the heart of
these relations is communication and the need to effectively convey what is required in terms of restrictive behaviours; the value of relinquishing certain citizen freedoms (e.g., the right to travel); and the significance of sharing personal health information, by way of Covid test results. In England, the announcement of 19 July 2021 as a ‘freedom day’ (U.K. Government, 2021) marked the government abandoning legal restrictions and subsequently relying upon individual citizens’ assessment of risk and responsibility for ‘living with Covid’. However, in order to exercise such judgement, the public was still reliant upon the information and guidance they had been receiving – principally from the government – through the media. Alternative sources of information include national health services and scientific research, which along with the media, demand literacy in what are specialised genres of communication. This emphasises the significance of being able to access, critically evaluate and understand the various messages related to Covid, as well as the importance of constructing those messages in a clear and coherent way.
We can learn important lessons about language and communication from previous responses to large-scale health challenges; Powers (2008 , p. 2) made the prescient observation that from a communications viewpoint, the handling of the SARS pandemic “provides important lessons that can better prepare us all for the much larger pandemic that many in the health community are predicting will occur in the not-too-distant future”. The first lesson is that “the way people communicate about a topic largely determines how they are likely to understand the topic and behave toward it” (Powers, 2008 , p. 2). In the case of SARS, the association with the handling of wild animals forged by the Chinese media while it was still relatively contained led many to believe they were not at risk if they did not indulge in this ‘unhealthy’ practice. Other studies in the volume The Social Construction of SARS (Powers and Xiao, 2008) provide lessons about communicating during a health crisis, with varying degrees of success. For example, Xiao (2008) highlights that in adhering to a strictly scientific narrative of its actions, the public officials in Hong Kong failed to give the public a ‘hero’ story to boost morale – the likes of which were seen in Singapore and China. Indeed, Weber, Yang and Shien (2008) argue that tapping into a national mythology of “triumph over adversity” helped the Singaporean government to rebuild its flagging image. Hudson (2008) offers a more critical view of Singapore’s ‘war on SARS’, in that the WAR metaphor did introduce fear, heroes, victory and national pride but also obscured increased surveillance, militarisation and authoritarianism. This example demonstrates the power that metaphors have in shaping people’s understanding of complex and often abstract concepts. However, rather than obscuring matters, researchers have also found that metaphorical language can aid comprehension (Thibodeau et al., 2017). Metaphor is multifunctional and pervasive in public discourse.
Indeed, the label ‘coronavirus’ itself is based on the shape of the virus, which appears like a ‘corona’ (in the stellar sense) – the Latin word for ‘crown’. Furthermore, this is realised across languages, with the Chinese 冠状病毒 (Gu ā nzhuàng bìngdú) more directly translating as ‘crown virus’.
Studies of the SARS pandemic have demonstrated the significance of investigating localised responses to disease outbreaks, in order to draw on the more immediate contexts in which health communication takes place. There is already a body of research that has begun to document the impact of Covid-19 and how it has been communicated and understood across various contexts. There is clear evidence that the pandemic has had a greater impact on some communities than on others. Lupton (2022 , p. 37) offers a Marxist-based critique to highlight the social determinants of health and healthcare, ultimately showing “how neoliberal and free market capitalist systems have been called to account and disrupted by the COVID crisis but have also operated to protect the privileged”. An important issue contributing to this inequality is the availability of quality health information in various languages; for instance, Chen (2020) has highlighted imbalances in the language resources made available for minority indigenous language communities in Taiwan, particularly those reliant on the tourism economy. Meanwhile, Hua (2021) visually documents the signs that appeared in shop windows following lockdown in the U.K., highlighting the “sensibility” of hand-written signs appearing in English, compared with the informational, printed signs appearing in other languages. The mode of communication has also been shown to be significant, with Bai (2020) discussing Mongolian fiddle stories in response to Covid-19 as a medium through which solidarity and identity are reaffirmed. Music as a means of spreading information is also at the centre of Abubakari et al.’s (2021) study on how Covid-19 health protocols were communicated in rural northeast Ghana, while Zhang and Zhao (2020) report how Chinese vloggers invite followers to co-construct an emotional experience that brings together the global Chinese-speaking community.
We can also see that other social factors have an influence on what aspects of the pandemic are discussed. Investigating discussions of Covid-19 via the social news aggregation platform Reddit, Aggarwal et al. (2020, p. 5) found that men more often discussed economic and political issues, compared with women, who focused more on social topics. Despite differences in the amount and type of health information made available across various languages and platforms, Covid-19 has precipitated rich language innovation as communities have navigated the impacts of the pandemic in clinical, social and professional contexts. Popular articles documenting the ‘language of Covid-19’ attest to its productivity in English (Lawson, 2020), German (Young-Powell, 2021), French (Lenuzza et al., 2021) and Spanish (Gutiérrez, 2020), for example, and research is beginning to show regional differences in
how these innovations impact everyday communication (such as in Pakistan; see Ahmed and Islam, 2020). This suggests that while access to language (i.e., as information) can restrict people’s experiences of global health issues, equally people can create the linguistic and communicative resources they require in order to express and make sense of those experiences.
It may seem that questions of health are fundamentally biological, favouring a positivist theoretical approach in which there are objective signifiers of well-being and illness (e.g., symptoms) that can be documented, tested and verified through the physical body. In other words, there is an appeal to thinking of ‘health’ and ‘illness’ as distinct realities, with one precluding the other. However, there is increasing awareness that many such biological ‘realities’ are more complicated than traditional categorisations have prescribed and are, in fact, determined by socially, culturally and historically situated ideas about what it means to be, for example, ‘female’ or ‘male’ (Sveinsdóttir, 2013). Burr (2015) cites the changing attitudes towards excessive alcohol consumption as an example of behaviour that was historically admonished and met with imprisonment in some cases, but more recently – following temperance movements in nineteenth-century U.S. and U.K., for example – has been understood in terms of addiction, for which the appropriate responsive measure is therapy. In a social constructionist approach, we “take a critical stance toward our taken-for-granted ways of understanding the world and ourselves” and recognise that shared knowledge is negotiated through daily interactions between people in the course of social life (Burr, 2015, p. 3). It is on this basis that we here present our investigations of the construction of public discourses on the Covid-19 pandemic – and responses to it – thus far. We talk about ‘viral language’ both as communications that have been generated in a historical moment defined by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 as well as in acknowledgement of the ways in which language and communicative practices, ways of speaking and subsequently knowing are transmitted and spread rapidly and widely, like viruses. We present our observations of data collected during 2020, capturing the emergence and impact of Covid-19 in the lead-up to the earliest vaccination treatments. We offer details and applications of a variety of linguistic approaches that readers can adopt in the continued investigation of Covid-19 and wider exploration of healthrelated issues.
1.2 Constructions of health in public discourses
The Covid-19 pandemic represents the latest iteration of large-scale disease outbreaks, which, as Lupton (2022 , p. 14) writes, “are always accompanied by significant sociocultural and political disruptions and transformations”. Furthermore, responses to such disruptions typically bring to the surface
hidden, unacknowledged or long-established beliefs and practices (Lupton, 2022). Our approach to identifying and interrogating such beliefs and practices is to investigate how they manifest in public discourses. Fairclough (2013, p. 11) tells us that ‘discourses’ are “semiotic ways of constructing aspects of the world (physical, social or mental) that can generally be identified with different positions or perspectives of different groups of social actors”. In this way, we can examine semiotic resources – language, images, sounds etc. – as having been produced by particular individuals or groups in particular contexts, for particular audiences and communicative purposes. Working to understand the use of such resources in context offers insights into how they are chosen to achieve those purposes (successfully or otherwise) and how they reflect the nature of the relationship between the communicator and their audience. Any given communication, therefore, can indicate interpersonal dynamics and structures, expressing aspects of identity and exposing the often subtle enactment of power by institutions, high-profile individuals or, conversely, the subversive power of ‘ordinary’ people (Fairclough, 2013, p. 15).
While a single instance of communication alone would not constitute a discourse, discourses are formulated through the accumulation of the numerous communications that occur in relation to any aspect of the world. Discourses involve “patterns of belief and habitual actions as well as patterns of language” ( Johnstone, 2018 , p. xviii), and these are typically coconstructed by numerous participants, engaging in the reification of often quite abstract concepts. In 2022, Musolff et al. (2022) published an edited collection of Pandemic and Crisis Discourse, focusing on communications around Covid-19 and organising the compendium around discourses of authority, crisis management, ‘war’ against the pandemic, discourses of judgement and rivalry and, finally, the discourse of empathy and encouragement. Such discourses necessarily involve participants across a range of social, professional and even political contexts. Those studies are complemented by a collection of edited blog posts ( Jones, 2021), which additionally compare media representations in different countries, investigate both public signage and multimodal creativity online, and discuss what meanings are created by (not) wearing a face mask.
In studying public discourses in this book, we prioritise the mainstream ideas that pervade wider society. Our approach is therefore not exhaustive of the various points of view that might be found in more private discourses, or held by minority groups. Nevertheless, by studying resources that are available publicly, we include texts that are – in principle – accessible to anyone, and we can also make observations of whose voices are made public, i.e., which beliefs and practices are amplified on the basis of the power held by those who promote them. Our case studies explore texts produced by politicians, scientific
researchers, journalists and companies, scrutinising the representations they offer of various aspects of health, as manifested in their representations of the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, while the pandemic has prompted many to adopt and adapt to new forms of communication, our studies involve relatively well-established modes, in the form of research and news articles, advertising materials and Twitter posts. We maintain that the approaches we have introduced and outlined can be adapted to the study of alternative and emerging modes; we encourage readers to test that proposition.
Analyses informed by linguistic theory can provide the vocabulary and the perspectives for making precise observations of how patterns of belief and habitual actions are evidenced in language use. In the introduction to their edited collection, Musolff et al. (2022 , p. 1) provide a view of the breadth of ways in which Covid-19 can be studied as a question of language, writing that:
The public debates about the pandemic have articulated a vast range of critical reflections on communication: agenda-setting, categorization and metaphorization of the illness and the administrative responses to it, perceived ‘performances’ of specific governments and administrations in dealing with it, as well as empathy (and lack of it) in the communication of doctors, carers, patients, patients’ relatives, public services, and further social institutions involved in dealing with the crisis.
Contributions to the collection on Pandemic and Crisis Discourse include explorations of press conferences, webpages, children’s books, political speeches and news coverage, to name a few. Researchers have shown how direct and indirect references to Covid-19 have become part of a linguistic landscape that resides in public spaces such as shops and restaurants on a northwest London high street (Hua, 2021) and on billboards and window displays in Germany (Mundt and Polzenhagen, 2022). Such work draws on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, demonstrating that attempts to document, understand and respond to the pandemic benefit from bringing together different expertise and ways of thinking.
In this book, we similarly refer to the Covid-19 pandemic as a wider case study to demonstrate a range of linguistic approaches that can be repurposed and applied to study different aspects of health communication. As such, we aim to equip readers with the concepts, vocabulary and knowledge of the methodological procedures through which emerging health concerns can be critically studied as forms of communication, which have implications for how we define and interrogate health and illness as personal and collective experiences.
1.3 Organisation of this book
The chapters of this book can be thought of in terms of addressing three broad areas:
1) the instructional use of language, as it is used by governments discussing Covid-19
2) informational discourses, as produced by scientists and popularised in news reports
3) innovation in response to Covid-19, as businesses and other language users adapt to the global pandemic.
We therefore attend to some of the different functions of language as well as the human experience of health and illness, emphasising the need for information and the organisation of large groups of people but also the creativity that helps us to navigate challenging times (see also Pérez-Sobrino et al., 2022).
Our first examination, in Chapter 2 , focuses on the Twitter profiles of state health departments in five different English-speaking countries, positing social media as an important resource in crisis communication. This collection of timestamped messaging provides a record of the changing priorities of each government, reflecting the different impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in various parts of the world over the course of 2020. We introduce analytical concepts from the field of pragmatics, namely speech acts and politeness, in order to facilitate an investigation of advice-giving. Our case study offers a practical demonstration of how to collect and analyse social media data, and we discuss key ethical considerations for working with this type of data. In our analysis, we consider the different strategies for getting people to follow advice while maintaining good interpersonal relationships, which we discuss in terms of directness. We demonstrate how different degrees of directness are realised in particular linguistic features, relating to grammatical mood and evaluative lexis, for instance.
In Chapter 3, we continue to focus on political discourse, investigating ways that the JOURNEY metaphor is used by politicians to describe various aspects of the pandemic and responsive measures. We introduce the #ReframeCovid project, which brings together metaphoric expressions in various languages and is available as a dataset that showcases the efforts to translate different Covid-19 experiences into supposedly more familiar scenarios. We discuss procedures for systematically identifying metaphors and subsequently analysing them as a fundamental feature of wider health discourses.
Chapter 4 marks a shift towards informational discourses, by looking at scientific articles as a distinct register of English. The methodology discussed
and applied in this chapter comes from corpus linguistics, and we describe a range of adaptable procedures that facilitate the rigorous investigation of large datasets, with the aid of specially designed software tools. As such, we provide a demonstration of how readers can explore their own collections of health-related texts to determine what is characteristic about their form and content. Through the identification of recurrent linguistic patterns, we highlight some of the key features that distinguish scientific writing from other types of communication and show what aspects of Covid-19 are prioritised in scientific reporting.
In Chapter 5, we turn this focus around to consider how ‘the science’ itself is discussed in a selection of U.K. news publications, particularly in relation to how the government involves scientific research in policymaking. Our methodological approach in this chapter is informed by systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as the basis for critical discourse analysis, investigating representations of ‘the science’ as an active participant in decision-making related to social restrictions as a result of Covid-19. We establish the concepts and procedures involved in conducting a transitivity analysis, of a way of talking critically about representations of people (and objects) and the actions they are ascribed in order to highlight the impact they are reported as having. We find that there are many agents involved in the creation and dissemination of ‘the science’, emphasising that scientific processes and scientific research take place in particular socio-political contexts, which in turn influence what ‘the science’ is.
As our attention shifts to language innovations, we review the literature on lexical innovation and neologism in Chapter 6 , documenting the creative side of the way Covid-19 has been discussed in public discourses. We outline established patterns for word formation and summarise the breadth of vocabulary that was recorded in blogs and articles in the early part of 2020. We implement an approach that enables researchers to document such changes, thereby offering a systematic way of capturing lexical innovation. Using a corpus of news articles on the topic of Covid-19, we show that many of the innovations associated with Covid-19 were short-lived, though there were examples of existing terms being repurposed in relation to Covidrelated experiences. We also show that documenting terms that undergo rapid changes in the frequency of use helps to capture shifting priorities in the response to the pandemic. Furthermore, we consider the role of highprofile individuals and the attention given to them by the media in bringing about lexical change.
In our final case study in Chapter 7, we explore creativity in a commercial context, investigating advertisements that were broadcast early on in the Covid-19 pandemic, in April 2020. We focus on commercials for beer brands, prompted by the change in lifestyle that resulted from restrictive measures and posed a major threat to the drinks industry. Our methodological approach
uses frameworks for multimodal analysis, demonstrating how readers can discuss the interaction between semiotic modes (e.g., text, image, sound) in health-related texts.
In Chapter 8 , we offer some concluding remarks from our analyses, contemplating how we have captured some aspects of the first year of the pandemic and what other dimensions there are to consider. We reiterate that we have demonstrated a range of techniques that can be transferred to various health-related research projects and that we have illustrated the fundamental importance of language and communication to our experiences of health and illness. We suggest some areas for future research, in part prompted by continuing challenges resulting from Covid-19, and highlight other research efforts towards understanding the impacts of the pandemic and navigating our way through those challenges.
Readers can approach each chapter as a distinct case study which provides details of how to apply specific analytical procedures. There is also value, we would argue, in engaging with the breadth of topics, as a reflection of the extent to which Covid-19 has pervaded global society and as a way for readers to familiarise themselves with an array of approaches for the continued investigation of experiences of health and illness.
Note
1 Misinformation refers to sharing wrong information which a speaker believes to be true, whereas disinformation means the deliberate and conscious spreading of falsehoods.
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2
HEALTH PROMOTION AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT ON TWITTER
2.1 Crisis communication and social media
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, governments around the world were tasked with providing information and guidance on how members of the public could minimise the impact of the virus. In many instances, this meant limiting the freedoms of the public, most notably in ‘lockdown’ measures by the way of quarantine: instructing people to stay at home and to refrain from coming into contact with other members of the public, where possible. Governments had to balance managing the health of individual members of the public with providing essential services, such as maintaining functioning health services, ensuring continuing education and preserving businesses and jobs. The success of these efforts has relied upon the compliance of the publics they serve, which in turn has relied upon strong leadership and clarity in outlining the containment measures that are ultimately designed to overcome the challenges resulting from the virus.
One medium through which governments communicate and engage with publics is social media. As part of the “e-Government imperative” (OECD, 2003), social media are an important technology for disaster and crisis response, as well as facilitating open exchange and interaction more generally (Graham et al., 2015). Previous studies have investigated the use of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for emergency crisis communication in response to the H1N1 flu pandemic (Chew and Eysenbach, 2010), the Ebola epidemic (Lazard et al., 2015) and Hurricane Sandy in the U.S. (Chatfield and Reddick, 2018), for example. In risk and crisis communication surrounding a health threat, the real-time dialogue afforded by social media platforms like Twitter is significant for building trust and motivating publics to take action (Tirkkonen and Luoma-aho, 2011; Malecki et al., 2021; Love et al., 2023).
DOI: 10.4324/9781003163459-2
Government organisations can also mark themselves as credible sources on social media, counteracting the potential for misinformation and satisfying other users’ need for up-to-date and accurate information (Park et al., 2016). The connectivity and information transfer of social media works both for disseminating important health messaging and ‘low-quality’ information; indeed, Depoux et al. (2020) claim that due to the circulation of misleading rumours and conspiracy theories during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, “social media panic travelled faster than Covid-19 spread”. In the absence of quality information, the public is susceptible to ‘fake news’ that can have a stigmatising effect and create health inequalities. Nevertheless, Dumbrell and Steele (2013, p. 2673) found that approximately 70% of government public health-related information is disseminated among Twitter users, suggesting that governments are viewed as a critical source for health information on Twitter and therefore crucial in stemming the spread of misinformation.
With the amount of information that is transmitted via social media, official health information sources such as state health departments need to ensure that their messaging is visible and has an impact. Strategies for maximising the potential that other users engage both with the post and the advice contained therein include using a personally directed style of language (including second-person address and directing rhetorical questions to the reader) (Dumbrell and Steele, 2013, p. 2673) and constructing messages to “emphasize human agency and control while avoiding assigning agency to threat [sic] posed by SARS-CoV-2” (Ma and Miller, 2021, p. 68). What is key, however, is that content is tailored to the needs of the intended recipients (Bedrosian et al., 2016), in terms of how communities understand and process information, as well as attending to their most urgent concerns. With this in mind, our analysis in this chapter focuses on investigating the Covid-19-related messaging that was issued by five different state health departments (from the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand) in terms of how they give advice to members of the public and how the content of their tweets reflects each nation’s experiences of the global pandemic. Specifically, we explore the following questions:
1. To what extent is the health departments’ messaging on Twitter concerned with giving advice?
2. What strategies are used to deliver advice, i.e., is it direct or indirect?
3. How does each health department’s Twitter content compare in terms of advice-giving and attending to the concerns of the populations it represents?
Through this study of Twitter data, we will also discuss some of the broader practical considerations involved in working with social media data and forms of online communication.
2.2 The pragmatics of advice-giving
We approach advice-giving as a feature of communication that can be contextualised within the broader field of study known as pragmatics. Through pragmatics, we explore how meaning is determined by context, and one component of this is a concern with how language is ‘performative’ (Austin, 1962). The term ‘speech act’ is often used to describe the social action that an utterance is used to perform, such as a declaration of war, a pronouncement of marriage or a promise. In such examples, the delivery of the communication is itself the performance of the act – i.e., a promise is made because we have said it, and it does not require any other action (though keeping a promise is another matter). There are, however, certain ‘felicity conditions’ that must be met which determine the legitimacy of a speech act (Austin, 1962 , p. 18). For instance, there are legal conditions under which only certain individuals or groups can declare war or pronounce marriage. In the case of less formal speech acts, we can question the speaker’s capacity to apologise on behalf of a group or their sincerity in making a promise.
Arguably the most influential taxonomy for speech acts was established by Searle (1969), who posited that there are five basic types of things one can do with language: one can tell people how things are (assertives); one can try to get others to do things (directives); one can commit oneself to doing things (commissives); one can express one’s feelings and attitudes (expressives); and one can bring about changes in the world through one’s utterances (declaratives). Advice-giving would typically be considered to be a directive, along with speech acts like requesting. As Searle (1969, p. 67) asserts, advice involves some inherent assessment or judgement, as well as the recommendation of future action: “Advising is more like telling you what is best for you.” As such, it can be difficult to differentiate advice from more general information-giving. Heritage and Sefi (1992) argue that while information is factual and non-normative, advice is normative and has almost a moral dimension. Nevertheless, advice-givers can present their recommendations as if these were more general information, placing the onus on the addressee to determine whether this is relevant to them and, subsequently, whether it is taken as advice and acted upon.
Since advice-giving can manifest in a range of forms, we can evaluate those forms as strategies for relational work, that is, in managing the relationship between the advice-giver and the advisee, which can have implications for the potential for compliance. The strategies for personalising or generalising advice can each be evaluated in relation to directness and indirectness, which is a key consideration for politeness research in the field of pragmatics and can offer insights into the type of relationship the health departments look to maintain with their respective publics.
2.2.1
Direct and indirect speech acts
In this section, we consider the factors that inform decisions about the formulation of an utterance as more or less direct, maintaining our focus on advice-giving. These factors relate to two fundamental concepts in pragmatics research: the levels of pragmatic meaning; and facework and politeness. Pragmatic meaning can be conceptualised as operating at three levels: (i) the locutionary act; (ii) the illocutionary act; and (iii) the perlocutionary act (Austin, 1962). These levels allow us to understand mismatches in form and function since they capture, respectively, (i) the semantic meaning of an utterance at the level of words; (ii) what the speaker ‘means’ in the context of the interaction; and (iii) the meaning that the addressee derives from the utterance. For instance, Adolphs (2008 , p. 61) points to the expression “Why don’t you” to discuss how it can be taken as a literal question (Why don’t you eat fish?), but is commonly used to put forward a suggestion (Why don’t you try the fish?). In the latter case, although we can describe the utterance as a question (the locutionary level), we can understand it as a request (illocutionary level), which is likely to be realised in the addressee’s response, e.g., no verbal response but the action of trying (eating) the fish (perlocutionary level). This kind of suggestion could also be delivered as a directive (Try the fish), and it is the availability of alternatives that prompts us to question why one form is preferred over another. Generally speaking, indirect forms are considered to be more polite than direct forms in that they tend to offer more optionality for the recipient (Locher, 2006). However, Culpeper (2011, p. 194) has reported that conventionalised direct forms are not considered impolite, particularly when a relatively high-power speaker is addressing a lower-authority hearer, and that unconventional indirect forms can also be considered impolite. This highlights the importance of considering not only what is said, but by whom.
The giving of advice involves an assessment of the communicative goals of a situation, balanced with the nature of the relationship that the speaker has with their addressee in order to determine the appropriate strategy. Fundamental to this evaluation of the context is a concern for ‘face’: an “image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes” which manifests in the “positive social value a person effectively claims for himself [sic]” (Goffman, 1955, p. 213). In other words, our interactional and communicative behaviours are informed by what others may think of us, and we tend to favour actions that are likely to be met with approval. In what remains one of the most influential models for ‘politeness’ and ‘facework’, Brown and Levinson (1978 , p. 62) differentiate between:
• negative face: “the want of every competent adult member that his [sic] actions be unimpeded by others”; and
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He says, moreover, “I am almost confident by circumstances, that Sir Christopher Wren knew the duplicate proportion when I gave him a visit; and then Mr. Hooke, by his book Cometa, will prove the last of us three that knew it.” Hooke’s Cometa was published in 1678. These inferences were all connected with Kepler’s law, that the times are in the sesquiplicate ratio of the major axes of the orbits. But Halley had also been led to the duplicate proportion by another train of reasoning, namely, by considering the force of the sun as an emanation, which must become more feeble in proportion to the increased spherical surface over which it is diffused, and therefore in the inverse proportion of the square of the distances. 24 In this view of the matter, however, the difficulty was to determine what would be the motion of a body acted on by such a force, when the orbit is not circular but oblong. The investigation of this case was a problem which, we can 398 easily conceive, must have appeared of very formidable complexity while it was unsolved, and the first of its kind.
Accordingly Halley, as his biographer says, “finding himself unable to make it out in any geometrical way, first applied to Mr. Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren, and meeting with no assistance from either of them, he went to Cambridge in August (1684), to Mr. Newton, who supplied him fully with what he had so ardently sought.”
23 Biog Brit , art Hooke
24 Bullialdus, in 1645, had asserted that the force by which the sun “prehendit et harpagat,” takes hold of and grapples the planets, must be as the inverse square of the distance.
A paper of Halley’s in the Philosophical Transactions for January, 1686, professedly inserted as a preparation for Newton’s work, contains some arguments against the Cartesian hypothesis of gravity, which seem to imply that Cartesian opinions had some
footing among English philosophers; and we are told by Whiston, Newton’s successor in his professorship at Cambridge, that Cartesianism formed a part of the studies of that place. Indeed, Rohault’s Physics was used as a classbook at that University long after the time of which we are speaking; but the peculiar Cartesian doctrines which it contained were soon superseded by others.
With regard, then, to this part of the discovery, that the force of the sun follows the inverse duplicate proportion of the distances, we see that several other persons were on the verge of it at the same time with Newton; though he alone possessed that combination of distinctness of thought and power of mathematical invention, which enabled him to force his way across the barrier. But another, and so far as we know, an earlier train of thought, led by a different path to the same result; and it was the convergence of these two lines of reasoning that brought the conclusion to men’s minds with irresistible force. I speak now of the identification of the force which retains the moon in her orbit with the force of gravity by which bodies fall at the earth’s surface. In this comparison Newton had, so far as I am aware, no forerunner. We are now, therefore, arrived at the point at which the history of Newton’s great discovery properly begins. ~Additional material in the 3rd edition.~ 399
CHAPTER II.
T I
E N D U G M , L I S D
N order that we may the more clearly consider the bearing of this, the greatest scientific discovery ever made, we shall resolve it into the partial propositions of which it consists. Of these we may enumerate five. The doctrine of universal gravitation asserts,
1. That the force by which the different planets are attracted to the sun is in the inverse proportion of the squares of their distances;
2. That the force by which the same planet is attracted to the sun, in different parts of its orbit, is also in the inverse proportion of the squares of the distances;
3. That the earth also exerts such a force on the moon, and that this force is identical with the force of gravity;
4. That bodies thus act on other bodies, besides those which revolve round them; thus, that the sun exerts such a force on the moon and satellites, and that the planets exert such forces on one another;
5. That this force, thus exerted by the general masses of the sun, earth, and planets, arises from the attraction of each particle of these masses; which attraction follows the above law, and belongs to all matter alike.
The history of the establishment of these five truths will be given in order.
1. Sun’s Force on Different Planets. With regard to the first of the above five propositions, that the different planets are attracted to the sun by a force which is inversely as the square of the distance, Newton had so far been anticipated, that several persons had discovered it to be true, or nearly true; that is, they had discovered that if the orbits of the planets were circles, the proportions of the central force to the inverse square of the distance would follow from Kepler’s third law, of the sesquiplicate proportion of the periodic times As we have seen, Huyghens’ theorems would have proved this, if they had been so applied; Wren knew it; Hooke not only knew it, but claimed a prior knowledge to Newton; and Halley had satisfied himself that it was at 400 least nearly true, before he visited Newton. Hooke was reported to Newton at Cambridge, as having applied to the Royal Society to do him justice with regard to his claims; but when Halley wrote and informed Newton (in a letter dated June 29, 1686), that Hooke’s conduct “had been represented in worse colors than it ought,” Newton inserted in his book a notice of these his predecessors, in order, as he said, “to compose the dispute.” 25 This notice appears in a Scholium to the fourth Proposition of the Principia, which states the general law of revolutions in circles. “The case of the sixth corollary,” Newton there says, “obtains in the celestial bodies, as has been separately inferred by our countrymen, Wren, Hooke, and Halley;” he soon after names Huyghens, “who, in his excellent treatise De Horologio Oscillatorio, compares the force of gravity with the centrifugal forces of revolving bodies.”
25 Biog Brit folio, art Hooke
The two steps requisite for this discovery were, to propose the motions of the planets as simply a mechanical problem, and to apply mathematical reasoning so as to solve this problem, with reference to Kepler’s third law considered as a fact. The former step was a consequence of the mechanical discoveries of Galileo and his school; the result of the firm and clear place which these gradually obtained in men’s mind, and of the utter abolition of all the notions of solid spheres by Kepler. The mathematical step required no small mathematical powers; as appears, when we consider that this was the first example of such a problem, and that the method of limits, under all its forms, was at this time in its infancy, or rather, at its birth. Accordingly, even this step, though much the easiest in the path of deduction, no one before Newton completely executed.
2. Force in different Points of an Orbit.—The inference of the law of the force from Kepler’s two laws concerning the elliptical motion, was a problem quite different from the preceding, and much more difficult; but the dispute with respect to priority in the two propositions was intermingled. Borelli, in 1666, had, as we have seen, endeavored to reconcile the general form of the orbit with the notion of a central attractive force, by taking centrifugal force into the account; and Hooke, in 1679, had asserted that the result of the law of the inverse square in the force of the earth would be an ellipse, 26 or a curve like an ellipse. 27 But it does not appear that this was any thing more than 401 a conjecture. Halley says 28 that “Hooke, in 1683, told him he had demonstrated all the laws of the celestial motions by the reciprocally duplicate proportion of the force of gravity; but that, being offered forty shillings by Sir Christopher Wren to produce such a demonstration, his answer was, that he had it, but would conceal it for some time, that others, trying and failing, might know how to value it when he should make it public.” Halley, however, truly
observes, that after the publication of the demonstration in the Principia, this reason no longer held; and adds, “I have plainly told him, that unless he produce another differing demonstration, and let the world judge of it, neither I nor any one else can believe it.”
26 Newton’s Letter, Biog. Brit., Hooke, p. 2660.
27 Birch’s Hist R S , Wallis’s Life
28 Enc Brit , Hooke, p 2660
Newton allows that Hooke’s assertions in 1679 gave occasion to his investigation on this point of the theory. His demonstration is contained in the second and third Sections of the Principia. He first treats of the general law of central forces in any curve; and then, on account, as he states, of the application to the motion of the heavenly bodies, he treats of the case of force varying inversely as the square of the distance, in a more diffuse manner.
In this, as in the former portion of his discovery, the two steps were, the proposing the heavenly motions as a mechanical problem, and the solving this problem Borelli and Hooke had certainly made the former step, with considerable distinctness; but the mathematical solution required no common inventive power
Newton seems to have been much ruffled by Hooke’s speaking slightly of the value of this second step; and is moved in return to deny Hooke’s pretensions with some asperity, and to assert his own. He says, in a letter to Halley, “Borelli did something in it, and wrote modestly; he (Hooke) has done nothing; and yet written in such a way as if he knew, and had sufficiently hinted all but what remained to be determined by the drudgery of calculations and observations; excusing himself from that labor by reason of his other business;
whereas he should rather have excused himself by reason of his inability; for it is very plain, by his words, he knew not how to go about it. Now is not this very fine? Mathematicians that find out, settle, and do all the business, must content themselves with being nothing but dry calculators and drudges; and another that does nothing but pretend and grasp at all things, must carry away all the inventions, as well of those that were to follow him as of those that 402 went before.” This was written, however, under the influence of some degree of mistake; and in a subsequent letter, Newton says, “Now I understand he was in some respects misrepresented to me, I wish I had spared the postscript to my last,” in which is the passage just quoted. We see, by the melting away of rival claims, the undivided honor which belongs to Newton, as the real discoverer of the proposition now under notice. We may add, that in the sequel of the third Section of the Principia, he has traced its consequences, and solved various problems flowing from it with his usual fertility and beauty of mathematical resource; and has there shown the necessary connection of Kepler’s third law with his first and second.
3. Moon’s Gravity to the Earth. Though others had considered cosmical forces as governed by the general laws of motion, it does not appear that they had identified such forces with the force of terrestrial gravity. This step in Newton’s discoveries has generally been the most spoken of by superficial thinkers; and a false kind of interest has been attached to it, from the story of its being suggested by the fall of an apple. The popular mind is caught by the character of an eventful narrative which the anecdote gives to this occurrence; and by the antithesis which makes a profound theory appear the result of a trivial accident. How inappropriate is such a view of the matter we shall soon see. The narrative of the progress of Newton’s thoughts, is given by Pemberton (who had it from Newton himself) in
his preface to his View of Newton’s Philosophy, and by Voltaire, who had it from Mrs. Conduit, Newton’s niece. 29 “The first thoughts,” we are told, “which gave rise to his Principia, he had when he retired from Cambridge, in 1666, on account of the plague (he was then twenty-four years of age). As he sat alone in a garden, he fell into a speculation on the power of gravity; that as this power is not found sensibly diminished at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth to which we can rise, neither at the tops of the loftiest buildings, nor even on the summits of the highest mountains, it appeared to him reasonable to conclude that this power must extend much further than was usually thought: Why not as high as the moon? said he to himself; and if so, her motion must be influenced by it; perhaps she is retained in her orbit thereby.”
29 Elémens de Phil de Newton, 3me partie, chap iii
The thought of cosmical gravitation was thus distinctly brought into being; and Newton’s superiority here was, that he conceived the 403 celestial motions as distinctly as the motions which took place close to him; considered them as of the same kind, and applied the same rules to each, without hesitation or obscurity. But so far, this thought was merely a guess: its occurrence showed the activity of the thinker; but to give it any value, it required much more than a “why not?” a “perhaps ” Accordingly, Newton’s “why not?” was immediately succeeded by his “if so, what then?” His reasoning was, that if gravity reach to the moon, it is probably of the same kind as the central force of the sun, and follows the same rule with respect to the distance. What is this rule? We have already seen that, by calculating from Kepler’s laws, and supposing the orbits to be circles, the rule of the force appears to be the inverse duplicate proportion of the distance; and this, which had been current as a conjecture
among the previous generation of mathematicians, Newton had already proved by indisputable reasonings, and was thus prepared to proceed in his train of inquiry. If, then, he went on, pursuing his train of thought, the earth’s gravity extend to the moon, diminishing according to the inverse square of the distance, will it, at the moon’s orbit, be of the proper magnitude for retaining her in her path? Here again came in calculation, and a calculation of extreme interest; for how important and how critical was the decision which depended on the resulting numbers? According to Newton’s calculations, made at this time, the moon by her motion in her orbit, was deflected from the tangent every minute through a space of thirteen feet. But by noticing the space through which bodies would fall in one minute at the earth’s surface, and supposing this to be diminished in the ratio of the inverse square, it appeared that gravity would, at the moon’s orbit, draw a body through more than fifteen feet. The difference seems small, the approximation encouraging, the theory plausible; a man in love with his own fancies would readily have discovered or invented some probable cause of this difference. But Newton acquiesced in it as a disproof of his conjecture, and “laid aside at that time any further thoughts of this matter;” thus resigning a favorite hypothesis, with a candor and openness to conviction not inferior to Kepler, though his notion had been taken up on far stronger and sounder grounds than Kepler dealt in; and without even, so far as we know, Kepler’s regrets and struggles. Nor was this levity or indifference; the idea, though thus laid aside, was not finally condemned and abandoned. When Hooke, in 1679, contradicted Newton on the subject of the curve described by a falling body, and asserted it to be an ellipse, Newton 404 was led to investigate the subject, and was then again conducted, by another road, to the same law of the inverse square of the distance. This
naturally turned his thoughts to his former speculations. Was there really no way of explaining the discrepancy which this law gave, when he attempted to reduce the moon’s motion to the action of gravity? A scientific operation then recently completed, gave the explanation at once. He had been mistaken in the magnitude of the earth, and consequently in the distance of the moon, which is determined by measurements of which the earth’s radius is the base He had taken the common estimate, current among geographers and seamen, that sixty English miles are contained in one degree of latitude. But Picard, in 1670, had measured the length of a certain portion of the meridian in France, with far greater accuracy than had yet been attained and this measure enabled Newton to repeat his calculations with these amended data. We may imagine the strong curiosity which he must have felt as to the result of these calculations. His former conjecture was now found to agree with the phenomena to a remarkable degree of precision. This conclusion, thus coming after long doubts and delays, and falling in with the other results of mechanical calculation for the solar system, gave a stamp from that moment to his opinions, and through him to those of the whole philosophical world.
[2d Ed.] [Dr. Robison (Mechanical Philosophy, p. 288) says that Newton having become a member of the Royal Society, there learned the accurate measurement of the earth by Picard, differing very much from the estimation by which he had made his calculations in 1666. And M. Biot, in his Life of Newton, published in the Biographie Universelle, says, “According to conjecture, about the month of June, 1682, Newton being in London at a meeting of the Royal Society, mention was made of the new measure of a degree of the earth’s surface, recently executed in France by Picard; and great
praise was given to the care which had been employed in making this measure exact.”
I had adopted this conjecture as a fact in my first edition; but it has been pointed out by Prof. Rigaud (Historical Essay on the First Publication of the Principia, 1838), that Picard’s measurement was probably well known to the Fellows of the Royal Society as early as 1675, there being an account of the results of it given in the Philosophical Transactions for that year. Newton appears to have discovered the method of determining that a body might describe an ellipse when acted upon by a force residing in the focus, and varying 405 inversely as the square of the distance, in 1679, upon occasion of his correspondence with Hooke. In 1684, at Halley’s request, he returned to the subject, and in February, 1685, there was inserted in the Register of the Royal Society a paper of Newton’s (Isaaci Newtoni Propositiones de Motu) which contained some of the principal Propositions of the first two Books of the Principia. This paper, however, does not contain the Proposition “Lunam gravitare in terram,” nor any of the other propositions of the third Book. The Principia was printed in 1686 and 7, apparently at the expense of Halley. On the 6th of April, 1687, the third Book was presented to the Royal Society.]
It does not appear, I think, that before Newton, philosophers in general had supposed that terrestrial gravity was the very force by which the moon’s motions are produced. Men had, as we have seen, taken up the conception of such forces, and had probably called them gravity: but this was done only to explain, by analogy, what kind of forces they were, just as at other times they compared them with magnetism; and it did not imply that terrestrial gravity was a force which acted in the celestial spaces. After Newton had
discovered that this was so, the application of the term “gravity” did undoubtedly convey such a suggestion; but we should err if we inferred from this coincidence of expression that the notion was commonly entertained before him. Thus Huyghens appears to use language which may be mistaken, when he says, 30 that Borelli was of opinion that the primary planets were urged by “gravity” towards the sun, and the satellites towards the primaries The notion of terrestrial gravity, as being actually a cosmical force, is foreign to all Borelli’s speculations 31 But Horrox, as early as 1635, appears to have entertained the true view on this subject, although vitiated by Keplerian errors concerning the connection between the rotation of the central body and its effect on the body which revolves about it. Thus he says, 32 that the emanation of the earth carries a projected stone along with the motion of the earth, just in the same way as it carries the moon in her orbit; and that this force is greater on the stone than on the moon, because the distance is less.
30 Cosmotheoros, l. 2. p. 720.
31 I have found no instance in which the word is so used by him.
32 Astronomia Kepleriana defensa et promota, cap. 2. See further on this subject in the Additions to this volume
The Proposition in which Newton has stated the discovery of which we are now speaking, is the fourth of his third Book: “That the moon gravitates to the earth, and by the force of gravity is perpetually 406 deflected from a rectilinear motion, and retained in her orbit.” The proof consists in the numerical calculation, of which he only gives the elements, and points out the method; but we may observe, that no small degree of knowledge of the way in which astronomers had obtained these elements, and judgment in
selecting among them, were necessary: thus, the mean distance of the moon had been made as little as fifty-six and a half semidiameters of the earth by Tycho, and as much as sixty-two and a half by Kircher: Newton gives good reasons for adopting sixty-one.
The term “gravity,” and the expression “to gravitate,” which, as we have just seen, Newton uses of the moon, were to receive a still wider application in consequence of his discoveries; but in order to make this extension clearer, we consider it as a separate step. ~Additional material in the 3rd edition.~
4. Mutual Attraction of all the Celestial Bodies.—If the preceding parts of the discovery of gravitation were comparatively easy to conjecture, and difficult to prove, this was much more the case with the part of which we have now to speak, the attraction of other bodies, besides the central ones, upon the planets and satellites. If the mathematical calculation of the unmixed effect of a central force required transcendent talents, how much must the difficulty be increased, when other influences prevented those first results from being accurately verified, while the deviations from accuracy were far more complex than the original action! If it had not been that these deviations, though surprisingly numerous and complicated in their nature, were very small in their quantity, it would have been impossible for the intellect of man to deal with the subject; as it was, the struggle with its difficulties is even now a matter of wonder.
The conjecture that there is some mutual action of the planets, had been put forth by Hooke in his Attempt to prove the Motion of the Earth (1674). It followed, he said, from his doctrine, that not only the sun and moon act upon the course and motion of the earth, but that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, have also, by their
attractive power, a considerable influence upon the motion of the earth, and the earth in like manner powerfully affects the motions of those bodies. And Borelli, in attempting to form “theories” of the satellites of Jupiter, had seen, though dimly and confusedly, the probability that the sun would disturb the motions of these bodies. Thus he says (cap. 14), “How can we believe that the Medicean globes are not, like other planets, impelled with a greater velocity when they approach the sun: and thus they are acted upon by two moving forces, one of 407 which produces their proper revolution about Jupiter, the other regulates their motion round the sun.” And in another place (cap. 20), he attempts to show an effect of this principle upon the inclination of the orbit; though, as might be expected, without any real result.
The case which most obviously suggests the notion that the sun exerts a power to disturb the motions of secondary planets about primary ones, might seem to be our own moon; for the great inequalities which had hitherto been discovered, had all, except the first, or elliptical anomaly, a reference to the position of the sun. Nevertheless, I do not know that any one had attempted thus to explain the curiously irregular course of the earth’s attendant. To calculate, from the disturbing agency, the amount of the irregularities, was a problem which could not, at any former period, have been dreamt of as likely to be at any time within the verge of human power.
Newton both made the step of inferring that there were such forces, and, to a very great extent, calculated the effects of them. The inference is made on mechanical principles, in the sixth Theorem of the third Book of the Principia; that the moon is attracted by the sun, as the earth is; that the satellites of Jupiter
and Saturn are attracted as the primaries are; in the same manner, and with the same forces. If this were not so, it is shown that these attendant bodies could not accompany the principal ones in the regular manner in which they do. All those bodies at equal distances from the sun would be equally attracted.
But the complexity which must occur in tracing the results of this principle will easily be seen. The satellite and the primary, though nearly at the same distance, and in the same direction, from the sun, are not exactly so. Moreover the difference of the distances and of the directions is perpetually changing; and if the motion of the satellite be elliptical, the cycle of change is long and intricate: on this account alone the effects of the sun’s action will inevitably follow cycles as long and as perplexed as those of the positions But on another account they will be still more complicated; for in the continued action of a force, the effect which takes place at first, modifies and alters the effect afterwards. The result at any moment is the sum of the results in preceding instants: and since the terms, in this series of instantaneous effects, follow very complex rules, the sums of such series will be, it might be expected, utterly incapable of being reduced to any manageable degree of simplicity.
It certainly does not appear that any one but Newton could make 408 any impression on this problem, or course of problems. No one for sixty years after the publication of the Principia, and, with Newton’s methods, no one up to the present day, had added any thing of any value to his deductions. We know that he calculated all the principal lunar inequalities; in many of the cases, he has given us his processes; in others, only his results. But who has presented, in his beautiful geometry, or deduced from his simple principles, any of the inequalities which he left untouched? The ponderous instrument
of synthesis, so effective in his hands, has never since been grasped by one who could use it for such purposes; and we gaze at it with admiring curiosity, as on some gigantic implement of war, which stands idle among the memorials of ancient days, and makes us wonder what manner of man he was who could wield as a weapon what we can hardly lift as a burden.
It is not necessary to point out in detail the sagacity and skill which mark this part of the Principia. The mode in which the author obtains the effect of a disturbing force in producing a motion of the apse of an elliptical orbit (the ninth Section of the first Book), has always been admired for its ingenuity and elegance The general statement of the nature of the principal inequalities produced by the sun in the motion of a satellite, given in the sixty-sixth Proposition, is, even yet, one of the best explanations of such action; and the calculations of the quantity of the effects in the third Book, for instance, the variation of the moon, the motion of the nodes and its inequalities, the change of inclination of the orbit, are full of beautiful and efficacious artifices. But Newton’s inventive faculty was exercised to an extent greater than these published investigations show. In several cases he has suppressed the demonstration of his method, and given us the result only; either from haste or from mere weariness, which might well overtake one who, while he was struggling with facts and numbers, with difficulties of conception and practice, was aiming also at that geometrical elegance of exposition, which he considered as alone fit for the public eye. Thus, in stating the effect of the eccentricity of the moon’s orbit upon the motion of the apogee, he says, 33 “The computations, as too intricate and embarrassed with approximations, I do not choose to introduce.”
33 Schol. to Prop. 35, first edit.
The computations of the theoretical motion of the moon being thus difficult, and its irregularities numerous and complex, we may ask 409 whether Newton’s reasoning was sufficient to establish this part of his theory; namely, that her actual motions arise from her gravitation to the sun. And to this we may reply, that it was sufficient for that purpose,—since it showed that, from Newton’s hypothesis, inequalities must result, following the laws which the moon’s inequalities were known to follow;—since the amount of the inequalities given by the theory agreed nearly with the rules which astronomers had collected from observation;—and since, by the very intricacy of the calculation, it was rendered probable, that the first results might be somewhat inaccurate, and thus might give rise to the still remaining differences between the calculations and the facts. A Progression of the Apogee; a Regression of the Nodes; and, besides the Elliptical, or first Inequality, an inequality, following the law of the Evection, or second inequality discovered by Ptolemy; another, following the law of the Variation discovered by Tycho; were pointed out in the first edition of the Principia, as the consequences of the theory. Moreover, the quantities of these inequalities were calculated and compared with observation with the utmost confidence, and the agreement in most instances was striking. The Variation agreed with Halley’s recent observations within a minute of a degree. 34 The Mean Motion of the Nodes in a year agreed within less than one-hundredth of the whole. 35 The Equation of the Motion of the Nodes also agreed well. 36 The Inclination of the Plane of the Orbit to the ecliptic, and its changes, according to the different situations of the nodes, likewise agreed. 37 The Evection has been already noticed as encumbered with peculiar difficulties: here the accordance was less close. The Difference of the daily progress of the Apogee in syzygy, and its daily Regress in
Quadratures, is, Newton says, “4¼ minutes by the Tables, 6⅔ by our calculation.” He boldly adds, “I suspect this difference to be due to the fault of the Tables.” In the second edition (1711) he added the calculation of several other inequalities, as the Annual Equation, also discovered by Tycho; and he compared them with more recent observations made by Flamsteed at Greenwich; but even in what has already been stated, it must be allowed that there is a wonderful accordance of theory with phenomena, both being very complex in the rules which they educe
34 B iii Prop 29
35 Prop. 32.
36 Prop. 33.
37 Prop. 35.
The same theory which gave these Inequalities in the motion of the Moon produced by the disturbing force of the sun, gave also 410 corresponding Inequalities in the motions of the Satellites of other planets, arising from the same cause; and likewise pointed out the necessary existence of irregularities in the motions of the Planets arising from their mutual attraction. Newton gave propositions by which the Irregularities of the motion of Jupiter’s moons might be deduced from those of our own; 38 and it was shown that the motions of their nodes would be slow by theory, as Flamsteed had found it to be by observation. 39 But Newton did not attempt to calculate the effect of the mutual action of the planets, though he observes, that in the case of Jupiter and Saturn this effect is too considerable to be neglected; 40 and he notices in the second edition, 41 that it follows from the theory of gravity, that the aphelia of Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars, slightly progress
38 B i Prop 66
39 B iii Prop 23
40 B iii Prop 13
41 Scholium to Prop. 14. B. iii.
In one celebrated instance, indeed, the deviation of the theory of the Principia from observation was wider, and more difficult to explain; and as this deviation for a time resisted the analysis of Euler and Clairaut, as it had resisted the synthesis of Newton, it at one period staggered the faith of mathematicians in the exactness of the law of the inverse square of the distance. I speak of the Motion of the Moon’s Apogee, a problem which has already been referred to; and in which Newton’s method, and all the methods which could be devised for some time afterwards, gave only half the observed motion; a circumstance which arose, as was discovered by Clairaut in 1750, from the insufficiency of the method of approximation. Newton does not attempt to conceal this discrepancy. After calculating what the motion of apse would be, upon the assumption of a disturbing force of the same amount as that which the sun exerts on the moon, he simply says, 42 “the apse of the moon moves about twice as fast.”
42 B. i. Prop. 44, second edit. There is reason to believe, however, that Newton had, in his unpublished calculations, rectified this discrepancy.
The difficulty of doing what Newton did in this branch of the subject, and the powers it must have required, may be judged of from what has already been stated;—that no one, with his methods, has yet been able to add any thing to his labors: few have undertaken to illustrate what he has written, and no great number
have understood it throughout. The extreme complication of the forces, and of the conditions under which they act, makes the subject by far the most thorny walk of mathematics. It is necessary to resolve the action 411 into many elements, such as can be separated; to invent artifices for dealing with each of these; and then to recompound the laws thus obtained into one common conception. The moon’s motion cannot be conceived without comprehending a scheme more complex than the Ptolemaic epicycles and eccentrics in their worst form; and the component parts of the system are not, in this instance, mere geometrical ideas, requiring only a distinct apprehension of relations of space in order to hold them securely; they are the foundations of mechanical notions, and require to be grasped so that we can apply to them sound mechanical reasonings. Newton’s successors, in the next generation, abandoned the hope of imitating him in this intense mental effort; they gave the subject over to the operation of algebraical reasoning, in which symbols think for us, without our dwelling constantly upon their meaning, and obtain for us the consequences which result from the relations of space and the laws of force, however complicated be the conditions under which they are combined. Even Newton’s countrymen, though they were long before they applied themselves to the method thus opposed to his, did not produce any thing which showed that they had mastered, or could retrace, the Newtonian investigations.
Thus the Problem of Three Bodies, 43 treated geometrically, belongs exclusively to Newton; and the proofs of the mutual action of the sun, planets, and satellites, which depend upon such reasoning, could not be discovered by any one but him.
43 See the history of the Problem of Three Bodies, ante, in Book vi Chap vi Sect 7
