LEXICAL INNOVATIONS OF COVID-19 PERIOD: STRUCTURAL AND LINGUOPRAGMATIC ASPECTS

Abstract

The aim of this article is to research the properties of lexical innovations emerged during 2020–2021, the years of the global pandemic COVID-19, and the aspects of meaning of new phenomena they nominate. The study is based on the procedural apparatus of structural and pragmatic linguistics. The data used are taken out from online versions of English quality and mass newspapers, magazines, online dictionaries (oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com, dictionary.cambridge.org, collinsdictionary.com, merriam-webster.com, urbandictionary.com, dictionary.com). The results characterise the frequency of word-formation morphological models, comprising word-composition, blending and shortening.
 The paper focuses on innovations with the lexical items "coronavirus", "Covid-19", "epidemic / pandemic", "quarantine", "Zoom" functioning as a structural component in a series of structurally similar lexical units. The frequency of this structural component is explained by newly coined items semantics, which is connected with the relevant referent accepted by the society and most adequately understood, as it conveys a specific content about the realities of life. The meaning of such a word-formation constituent is easily predicted on the basis of its semantic structure. The article singles out the specific features of using the analyzed lexical innovations to refer to referents of various spheres in the English media discourse of 2020-2021 are identified and investigated. The research proves that innovations in question function in the English media discourse to realize a number of strategies. In the studied research the role of the selected lexical innovations of Covid-19 period in the implementation of strategies for organizing Modern English media discourse were taken into consideration: informative-interpretative, evaluative and attention drawing.