Reframing paroemias of the coronavirus discourse

Abstract

The article explores the specifics of the paremic space of the coronavirus discourse, in which new images of typical situations related to the coronavirus pandemic are formed. The coronavirus narrative affects the use of phraseological units and paroemias, which, despite their stable structure, are subject to various modifications. The aim of this research is to de­termine the ways paroemias are modified by time-reframing, being one of the main discourse strategies. Modifications of phraseological units are set by the pragmatic goal of the subject of discourse, who, on the one hand, introduces new relevant information into the language, and on the other, is forced to protect himself / herself from any negative information. This implies an axiological reinterpretation of statements and their humorous presentation. The research methodology includes linguistic, pragmatic and cultural analyses used to study language phenomena as a means of organizing social experience in speech communication, as well as corpus-based methods of the selection and processing of linguistic data. This involves not only identifying language units and structures, but also describing conditions and mechanisms for their selection and functioning. The research material included examples of phraseological and paremiological transformations characteristic of the coronavirus discourse: refraseologization, formation of new meanings of idioms, and lexical and structural changes of phraseological units. Special attention is paid to the so-called ‘naïve’ axiology. The coronavirus discourse includes neologisms, a significant number of phraseological units and idioms, which have acquired new meanings, as well as new proper nouns such as Raskhlamingo, Kovidlo and Ukhan’ka.