Abstract Drawing upon the theoretical framework of ‘ladder of causation’ proposed by Pearl & Mackenzie (2018), this paper examines and analyses people’s causal cognition and attributional reflection on various prevention and control policies and measures as well as their effects in the pandemic situation of the COVID-19. To analyse people’s different observations and understandings of the pandemic, relevant linguistic expressions about the COVID-19 pandemic and its treatment measures are extracted from news reports and press coverage with an aim to reveal how people perceive the causal relation between actions of intervention and effects of control and thus to make inferences about it. A special focus is put on counter-factual expressions, e.g., Jiǎrú wǒmen dāngshí [bù] cǎiqǔ shèjiāo gélí cuòshī, qí jiéguǒ huì zěnyàng? (If we had [not] taken the measure of social distancing at that time, what would the result have been?) We argue that through examination of the textual forms of syntactic patterns and semantic structures, one is able to unpack the expressive features concerning people’s causal cognition and attributional reflection. The findings show that such expressions can be utilized to gauge the judgements of people in different regions on causal cognition and attributional reflection, and they also demonstrate the awareness of accountability and evaluation towards the morality risk between prevention measures and their effects.
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