Abstract
This study attempts to generate new insights into the wide spread online and
offline conspiratorial discourse on COVID-19. Twofold analytical lens consisted
of narrative interrelations framework and content analysis showed how the
linguistic resources and conversational such as popular socio-religious
discourses, hypothetical narratives, personal narratives, personal mental
archives, and interpolated arguments are integrated in the interpretation of
intertextual
Bases
such as Bill Gates’ TED talk 2015 (26%);
Nematullah Wali’s predictions (32%); ‘End of Days’ book by Sylvia Browne
(14.9%); and ‘The Eyes of Darkness’ novel by Dean Koontz (22%) by which the
conspiracists in Pakistan construct an internally persuasive discourse promoting
conspiracy theories on COVID-19. Several linguistic resources such as mood,
modality, topicalization, insinuation, and intertextuality emerged as the main
tools of making the conspiracy theories internally persuasive.