Linguistic innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic: the Spanish language case

Abstract

The paper contributes to the study of the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has produced and is producing at the present moment on the Spanish language. The impact is, of course, reflected at the lexical level as many new words and expressions have been coined to designate segments of new extralinguistic reality generated by the pandemic and the “new normal”. The article analyses recent “pandemic” updates of the Spanish Royal Academy dictionary electronic version DLE 23.4 and “covidic” neologisms and occasionalisms from semantical and morphological points of view.