When Negative Turns out to Be Positive

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on various aspects of society, including language and cognitive processes. This research investigates how the pandemic has influenced associations related to health-related words among 1,454 Estonian native speakers. Data collected between January and March 2023 were compared with a pre-pandemic dataset, the Dictionary of Estonian Word Associations (DEWA), compiled from 2016 to 2018. The study focuses on fifteen health-related cue words. The results revealed that five terms experienced significant changes in their association sequences concerning the COVID-19 crisis. Notably, among these 15 words, three stand out as the most significant cases where a change occurred in their primary responses: these typically exhibit the most robust and enduring associative links, making them less susceptible to change. This unveils shifts in the mental lexicon's representations and the evolving perceptions of specific words and concepts amidst the pandemic backdrop. These findings illustrate how unforeseen external disruptions, such as the COVID-19 crisis, can reconfigure the salience of certain concepts within language and cognition. This research contributes to our comprehension of the linguistic repercussions and potential language adaptations triggered by a health crisis. It also enriches the relatively understudied field of word association research, particularly in languages beyond the dominion of English.