Dialogues in Children's Literature Regarding COVID-19: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

As COVID-19 continues to affect the world population, more authors began writing children's
literature to help young readers cope with the situation. As part of their typical traits, they
contain dialogues; however, they play a crucial part in conveying information about the disease
and addressing common concerns. This research aims to describe the types of dialogues found
in the literary works based on their dimensions and how they add value to the purposes of the
writing. Based on Fairclough's framework on dialogue analysis, it employed the quantitative
descriptive analysis by first classifying the conversations found in 67 out of 142 books on the
disease and determine the dominant sub-dimensions as the determining factors of their functions
and relevance. In general, the books fulfilled their roles as children's reading resources.
Moreover, the results showed that the content value dominates the rest of the values (36%), and
they derived significantly from dialogues that provide and request information. In contrast,
societal value outweighed that of friendship, and subject location tends to predominantly around
the proximity of home. The books showed consistencies in their traits, and more importantly,
values in CDA, despite having a smaller percentage (7.5%) in dialogues giving consolation to
emphasize the efforts to ease fear and anxiety in the readers.