Coronaspeak as Key to Coronaculture: Studying New Cultural Practices Through Neologisms

Abstract

The research explores neologisms that have entered everyday English discourse during the coronavirus pandemic and formed so-called Coronaspeak. The analysis reveals that three approaches to neologisms are applicable to lexemes of Coronaspeak: the stylistic theory that is relevant to the words that used to be scientific terms but have been adopted by non-specialists, the etymological approach that regards as neologisms those new coinages that have developed a new meaning, and the denotational approach where neologisms are the lexemes created to nominate new concepts. Drawing on the assumption that language units verbalise cultural phenomena, the further study of Coronaspeak suggests that the modern English-speaking societies undergo a number of cultural changes: medicalisation of public discourse that originates from the government policy to engage the public in the struggle against COVID-19 as well as from using the pandemic as an argument in ideological and political conflicts; conceptualisation of the pandemic as a milestone, a turning point in history; introduction of new categories for social groups based on such criteria as health, profession, or attitude to the pandemic and socially responsible behaviour (e.g., clinically vulnerable people, key workers, covadults); development of new or modification of old cultural practices that embrace lifestyle (coronacocooing, WFH, drivecation), appearance (corona hair, coronabesity), patterns of online and offline communication (homeference, video party, coronadating, Wuhan shake); reconceptualisation of pre-pandemic concepts (home), and, finally, emergence of new types of interpersonal relations (coronarelationship, corona boyfriend).

Lexical Quantors: From Term to Discursive Practice

“…There are many LQs of negative semantics pertaining to different groups of nominative units representing new LK. These LQs may be regarded as nonce-words or neologisms (see Aleksyeyeva et al, 2020) formed as a result of creative verbal potential of the language in response to new challenges caused by the pandemic. Among those units are slangwords: 'covidiot'a person behaving irresponsibly in conditions of containment; 'morona'a person behaving stupidly because of or during the coronavirus outbreak; 'coronalusional'suffering from disordered thinking as a result of or during the Covid-19 crisis; 'zumped' -'dumped' by a partner via videolink or otherwise online; 'coronasshole'first applied in March 2020 to US panic buyers, then in June to US citizens refusing to wear masks, in July the synonym 'maskhole' began to trend on social media; 'maskulinity'a macho refusal to wear a face covering and others (Thorne, 2020).…”

Beyond the Language of Covid-19: Transformation of Social Discourse and Reproduction of Cultural Capital

“…The lexemes anthropause, Coronacaust, Coronapocalypse and Coronaspiracy in their turn verbalize society's attempt to conceptualize reality holistically, including causal relations between its parts (for more details, see (Alyeksyeyeva et al, 2020)).…”

Means of Foreign Language Teaching during Covid-19 Pandemic in Ukraine

“…Many interesting scientific works of Ukrainian and foreign scientists appeared during the spread of coronavirus disease in the spring of 2020. They draw attention to the peculiarities of learning and teaching English in a global pandemic (see, for example, Adami et al, 2020;Akut, 2020;Alyeksyeyeva, Chaiuk, & Galitska, 2020;Babelyuk, 2019, Babelyuk, Koliasa, Kushlyk, & Smaglii, 2020Huang et al, 2020;Katernina, 2020;Khalfan, Batool, & Shehzad, 2020;Martin, 2020;Sanchez & Inaki, 2020, etc. ).…”