The Associative Dictionary of Media Events in the Early XXI Century: a New Lexicographic Concept

Abstract

The article introduces a new concept of the Associative Dictionary of Media Events of the Early XXI Century. The project continues the traditions of common lexicography. As a rule, common lexicography is part of a special problem field described by various antinomies, e.g. objective vs. subjective in the language, individual vs. collective, descriptive vs. prescriptive approaches to the lexical representation in dictionaries, etc. The new dictionary represents a snapshot of everyday media consciousness and thus belongs to descriptive lexicographic projects. The dictionary is based on an associative experiment that involved Russian and French speakers. While traditional associative dictionaries contain the most frequent vocabulary, this project represents the conceptual meanings of various media events that exist in the everyday collective consciousness. The new dictionary belongs to media linguistics, descriptive lexicography, and interpretive linguistics. The present article describes the technology of its compilation, substantiates its relevance and novelty, and offers a sample entry using the case of the COVID-19 pandemic and its representation in the Russian language. Each media event consisted of two associative nests: one was based on the reactions of respondents who were familiar with the stimulus, whereas the other demonstrated reactions of participants unfamiliar with the media event. The epidemic being global, such key lexemes as "covid" and "coronavirus" lost their agnonymity for Russian speakers, and the media event appeared to have a zero agnonymous associative nest. The paper also provides a linguistic commentary on the covid entry, which summed up all the reactions received during the associative experiment. The lexicographic project can be of interest to specialists in media, political, cognitive, and cultural linguistics.