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neologisms - Coggle Diagram
neologisms
humour is central to many 'coronacoinages'
novel language as coping mechanism
if you can name it, you can talk about it
if you can talk about it, it helps people cope and get a handle on really difficult situations
'flatten the curve': prevent a rate from greatly increasing
reminder of the importance of both individual and collective action
'alchemizes fear into action'
caremongering: a movement encouraging acts of kindness
instead of scaremongering: spreading frightening reports or rumours.
German 'coronaspeck'
stress eating amid stay-at-home orders
Spanish 'covidiota' and 'coronaburro'
pokes fun at people disregarding public health advice
'doomscrolling'
the hypnotic state of endlessly reading grim internet news
'Blursday'
weakening sense of time when so many days bleed into each other
Australian English
'quaz' for 'quarantine'
'sanny' for 'sanitiser'
queer and black communities
Miss Rona: slang term for the virus
emojis
folded hands emoji
medical mask emoji
microbe emoji
in vogue terms that'll stick around post-pandemic
those that describe lasting behavioural changes
'zoombombing': invading someone else's video call
ingenuity with vocabulary or clever vocabulary communicate that the current hardships won't last forever
'corona-agenda': subtle way of asking people to be patient with your temporary disrupted agenda
formation
challenging circumstances have given rise to new ways of expressing those challenges
f.e. Brexit
Bremain (campaign for Britain to stay in EU)
Bregret (some voted to leave and then regretted it)
repurposing of backstop
f.e. Covid-19
speed of linguistic change is unprecedented
fast spreading of the virus
its dominance in media
global interconnectivity (when social media and remote contact are important)
terms that relate to socially distanced nature of human contact
virtual happy hour
covideo party
quarantine and chill
'corona' as prefix
coronababies (children born or conceived during the pandemic)
Polish: coronavirus into a verb
abbreviations
WFH (work from home)
PPE (personal protective equipment)
old words in a new light
Fiona McPherson: senior editor of the Oxford English Dictionary
coronavirus
Covid-19 was coined in February (appeared on WHO)
April: 1,750 per million tokens
tokens: smallest units of language collected and tracked in the OED corpus
December: coronavirus appeared only 0.03 times per million tokens
goes back to 1960s
terms added in April
only new word: Covid-19
pre-existing words
f.e. infodemic
f.e. elbow bump
terms have gained new resonance when people where subject to:
stay-at-home order (US)
movement control order (Malaysia)
enhanced community quarantine (Philippines
nuancing of already existing words
can be subtly harmful
war metaphores (battles and front-lines) are applied to pandemic
->thinking only in terms of wartime emergency
detracts from longer-term structural changes needed
can obscure the roles of individuals and communities
project #ReframeCovid
liguists collect crowdsourced examples of alternatives to war language
toward expressions that communicate collective care and individual responsability
Inés Olza: started project on Twitter
temptation to use war metaphors
build unity
mobilise swiftly
consequences:
generates anxiety
might distort things about pandemic
'natural disaster' and 'perfect storm'
creates impression that pandemic was inevitable and unavoidable
neglects political, economic and environmental contexts that make some people more xposed
f.e. healthcare workers are called 'heroes'
rather than complex, frightened individuals doing a job
who need protective PPE and policy
rather than relying on own sacrifices
German non-war terms
one-off words like Öffnungsdiskussionsorgien (orgies of discussion)
describes seemingly endless policy debates over reopening