How the pandemic fuels linguistic change : lexical innovations in L1 and L2 English varieties
Wars and conquests have always opened the floodgates of new words and meanings into the lexicon of the English language. Another kind of war that opens the floodgates for the passage of neologisms into the English language is the war on health during epidemics or pandemics. The present study util...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2022
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18571/1/49343-178357-2-PB.pdf |
| _version_ | 1796932872651669504 |
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| author | Pura, Cielo May Gustilo, Leah Biermeier, Thomas |
| author_facet | Pura, Cielo May Gustilo, Leah Biermeier, Thomas |
| author_sort | Pura, Cielo May |
| collection | UKM |
| description | Wars and conquests have always opened the floodgates of new words and meanings into the
lexicon of the English language. Another kind of war that opens the floodgates for the passage
of neologisms into the English language is the war on health during epidemics or pandemics.
The present study utilized the News On the Web (NOW) corpus of English-corpora.org to (1)
produce a word-list of COVID-19 pandemic language classified as medical, economic,
political, and psychosocial lexemes; (2) identify the word-formation processes operating on the
COVID-19 related vocabulary, and (3) determine which words are prevalent and unique in L1,
L2 Asian, and L2 African varieties of the English language based on their occurrences in the
corpus. The study identified 590 pandemic-related words drawn from the News on the Web
(NOW) corpus dating from January 2020 to October 2021. The psychosocial category of the
pandemic lexicon constitutes the biggest category of words identified from the corpus. The
word-formation processes that operated in the production of the pandemic lexemes are
compounds, blends, affixation, acronyms, and back-formation. L1 countries have the highest
number of pandemic neologisms, prevalent or high-frequent pandemic lexemes, and unique
word combinations. People produce neologisms as a coping mechanism to overcome various
stressors and reflect their pandemic-related experiences. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T04:38:57Z |
| format | Article |
| id | ukm.eprints-18571 |
| institution | Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T04:38:57Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ukm.eprints-185712022-05-11T07:10:02Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18571/ How the pandemic fuels linguistic change : lexical innovations in L1 and L2 English varieties Pura, Cielo May Gustilo, Leah Biermeier, Thomas Wars and conquests have always opened the floodgates of new words and meanings into the lexicon of the English language. Another kind of war that opens the floodgates for the passage of neologisms into the English language is the war on health during epidemics or pandemics. The present study utilized the News On the Web (NOW) corpus of English-corpora.org to (1) produce a word-list of COVID-19 pandemic language classified as medical, economic, political, and psychosocial lexemes; (2) identify the word-formation processes operating on the COVID-19 related vocabulary, and (3) determine which words are prevalent and unique in L1, L2 Asian, and L2 African varieties of the English language based on their occurrences in the corpus. The study identified 590 pandemic-related words drawn from the News on the Web (NOW) corpus dating from January 2020 to October 2021. The psychosocial category of the pandemic lexicon constitutes the biggest category of words identified from the corpus. The word-formation processes that operated in the production of the pandemic lexemes are compounds, blends, affixation, acronyms, and back-formation. L1 countries have the highest number of pandemic neologisms, prevalent or high-frequent pandemic lexemes, and unique word combinations. People produce neologisms as a coping mechanism to overcome various stressors and reflect their pandemic-related experiences. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2022-02 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18571/1/49343-178357-2-PB.pdf Pura, Cielo May and Gustilo, Leah and Biermeier, Thomas (2022) How the pandemic fuels linguistic change : lexical innovations in L1 and L2 English varieties. GEMA ; Online Journal of Language Studies, 22 (1). pp. 80-109. ISSN 1675-8021 https://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1467 |
| spellingShingle | Pura, Cielo May Gustilo, Leah Biermeier, Thomas How the pandemic fuels linguistic change : lexical innovations in L1 and L2 English varieties |
| title | How the pandemic fuels linguistic change : lexical innovations
in L1 and L2 English varieties |
| title_full | How the pandemic fuels linguistic change : lexical innovations
in L1 and L2 English varieties |
| title_fullStr | How the pandemic fuels linguistic change : lexical innovations
in L1 and L2 English varieties |
| title_full_unstemmed | How the pandemic fuels linguistic change : lexical innovations
in L1 and L2 English varieties |
| title_short | How the pandemic fuels linguistic change : lexical innovations
in L1 and L2 English varieties |
| title_sort | how the pandemic fuels linguistic change lexical innovations in l1 and l2 english varieties |
| url | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18571/1/49343-178357-2-PB.pdf |
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