LEXICAL INNOVATIONS OF THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC PERIOD

Abstract

The article reveals influence of the modern social context caused by the Covid-19 pandemic on the linguistic situation, i.e. emergence of new elements of form, content and functioning in French media discourse. Thus, the method of correlation of social and linguistic factors used in linguistics is confirmed in the study of the historical development of society by analyzing changes in its vocabulary and determining the word markers («mots-témoins») of key concepts and events. Chronologically, the research covers the first half of the year 2020. The source of factual material is the electronic versions of the French periodicals: Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Point, L'OBS, etc. The analysis of linguistic units is accompanied by linguistic and cultural commentary and examples from Ukrainian media resources. The lexical corpus consists of medical terms and specialized vocabulary units related to education, media and society in the context of the coronavirus crisis. The article highlights the position of the French Academy as for grammatical forms, semantic features and functional characteristics of linguistic innovations. The peculiarities of use of certain key lexical innovations are compared on the material of periodicals in France, Belgium (Le Soir, DH.be) and Canada (Le Journal de Québec). The nominative function of the investigated lexemes in the media discourse is accompanied by stylistic coloring through metaphorization aimed to stress out the axiological and pragmatic functions of the journalistic text. The active use of this specific vocabulary is confirmed by the presence of synonymous series. The studied material revealed the use of English-language borrowings, which may become the subject of a separate analysis. A characteristic feature of these words is their derivational productivity, which leads to their widespread use in various linguistic registers. The list of the lexical innovations mentioned in the article is not exhaustive, since the problems associated with the coronavirus pandemic prompt active scientific and social activities that will inevitably be reflected in the language.