Características linguísticas da pseudociência: um estudo contrastivo de artigos acadêmicos que apoiam tratamentos controversos contra a COVID-19

Tony  Berber Sardinha; Ana Eliza Pereira Bocorny; Deise Prina Dutra; Maria Claudia Nunes Delfino; Paula Tavares Pinto; Simone Sarmento

Authors

Tony Berber Sardinha Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP) | São Paulo | SP | BR https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8815-1521
Ana Eliza Pereira Bocorny Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) | Porto Alegre | RS | BR https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0515-9630
Deise Prina Dutra Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) | Belo Horizonte | MG | BR https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5799-5174
Maria Claudia Nunes Delfino Faculdade de Tecnologia do Estado de São Paulo (FATEC) | Praia Grande | SP BR https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1976-8725
Paula Tavares Pinto Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho” (UNESP) | São José do Rio Preto | SP | BR https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9783-2724
Simone Sarmento Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) | Porto Alegre | RS | BR https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1405-3982

Keywords:

Corpus Linguistics, multi-dimensional analysis, collocation, pseudoscience, COVID-19

Abstract

This study aims to describe the linguistic characteristics of medical treatments promoted during the COVID-19 pandemic. A corpus comprising two subcorpora was collected: the first subcorpus consists of academic articles that recommend treatments not endorsed by health regulatory agencies; the second subcorpus contains articles that address various issues related to COVID-19 without endorsing such non-recommended treatments. The methodology employed a variant of Lexical Multidimensional Analysis (Berber Sardinha; Fitzsimmons-Doolan, 2025), based on the identification of collocational shifts. Five dimensions were identified: medical interventions vs. psychological impact; research ethics vs. comparative analysis of treatments; statistical analysis in pseudoscience vs. data sharing in legitimate science; promotion of repurposed drugs vs. critical evaluation and open science practices; impact of repurposed treatments vs. ethical approval and regulatory compliance. These dimensions capture the main communicative resources involved in the scientific construction of approved and contested treatments during the pandemic. The study shows that, although they may appear similar, genuine scientific practice and pseudoscience employ distinct forms of language and rely on different discourses and discursive formations. Both the linguistic features and the discourses involved are described in the article.

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References

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