LANGUAGE CHANGES IN THE TIME COVID-19. CONCEPT OF “CORONAVIRUS” IN THE KAZAKH LINGUISTIC CONSCIOUSNESS

ЯЗЫКОВЫЕ ИЗМЕНЕНИЯ ВО ВРЕМЯ COVID-19. ПОНЯТИЕ “КОРОНАВИРУС” В КАЗАХСКОМ ЯЗЫКОВОМ СОЗНАНИИ

Есениязова Гулмарал Серикбаевна

магистрант 2 курса, кафедра два иностранных языка Актюбинский региональный университет имени К.Жубанова

Казахстан, Актобе

Жумаханова Анаогуль Жумахановна

магистр гуманитарных наук, старший преподаватель, Актюбинский региональный университет имени К.Жубанова,

Казахстан, Актобе

ABSTRACT

Like any global catastrophe, COVID-19 has affected every aspect of our lives. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a huge number of new terms have entered the languages of the world. The paper deals with the terms, which are developed through the pandemic period and describes the concept of “coronavirus” in the language consciousness of representatives of the Kazakh nation. The research material was more than 300 lexical units obtained by the continuous sampling method from materials from the Kazakh websites and online newspapers for 2020-2021and free-associative was applied. The results of analyzing media indicated that the Kazakh language is expanded with lexical units denoting the disease itself and meaning the social changes. We have identified nuclear concepts, near and far periphery concepts in the language consciousness of Kazakh people.

АННОТАЦИЯ

Как и любая глобальная катастрофа, COVID-19 повлиял на все аспекты нашей жизни. Из-за пандемии Covid-19 в языки мира вошло огромное количество новых терминов. В статье рассматриваются термины, которые сложились в период пандемии, и описывается понятие “коронавирус” в языковом сознании представителей казахской нации. Материалом исследования послужили более 300 лексических единиц, полученных методом сплошной выборки из материалов казахстанских веб-сайтов и интернет-газет за 2020 - 2021 годы, и был применен свободно-ассоциативный метод.

Keywords: Covid-19 pandemic, language, terms, neologisms, media, associative experiment, concept, Kazakh language.

Ключевые слова: пандемия Covid-19, язык, термины, неологизмы, СМИ, ассоциативный эксперимент, концепт, казахский язык.

Introduction

In December 2019, information about a new virus that originated in the territory of China, Wuhan began to appear. After several months, the virus known as coronavirus or Covid-19 spread up all continents except Antarctica. According to official data of WHO (World Health Organization), the coronavirus infected 257 million people, confirmed death is 5 million. The Covid-19 has affected not only the health system, but it also has introduced new words and new phrases, significantly affected the linguistic picture of the world, and determined the change in the speech behavior of native speakers. In this regard, there is a dynamic process of enriching the lexical resources of national languages at the expense of new words with new meanings or changing the meaning of long-existing ones. The emergence of a huge number of lexical innovations requires the close attention of language researchers. Despite the number of works already published, the pandemic language peculiarities have not been sufficiently studied in the Kazakh language.

The purpose of this paper to identify the terms, which are developed through pandemic period and describe the concept of “coronavirus” in the language consciousness of representatives of the Kazakh nation. Our study is the first study that concerns the comparative analysis of Russian, English and Kazakh Covid-19 pandemic terms that affected social life.

Literature review

The virus "Coronavirus" comes from Latin, it is called because of its crown-like shape and spikes. The term COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease, Eng. 'coronavirus disease') appears in mass media on February 11, 2020 after the World Health Organization officially assigned this name to a new coronavirus infection. The abbreviation COVID-19 was included in the Oxford English Dictionary, due to its high frequency of use. This word means a disease caused by a coronavirus that was first reported in 2019 and became pandemic [Oxford dictionary]. The word “pandemic” was the word of the 2020 year by Merriam-Webster dictionary. It is defined as an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area. One of the popular terms was “Covidiot” – a person who annoys other people by refusing to obey social distance rules designed to prevent the spread of Covid-19 [Oxford dictionary]. The second popular term “Lockdown” was introduced as the word of the 2020 year by Collin’s dictionary. It means, “a temporary condition imposed by governmental authorities in which people are required to stay in their homes and limit activities outside the home involving public contact” [Collins’ dictionary]. Collin’s dictionary introduced the term “Doomscrolling” when people search for information about the coronavirus and fatal cases over the pandemic period. The explanation is given as, the activity of surfing the internet to read items about tragic or disastrous events. According to recent research, Collin’s dictionary presented 2021 top words, among them are new terms as “pingdemic” - the large-scale notification of members of the public by a contact-tracing app, “double-vaxxed” – having received two vaccinations against disease.” [Collin’s dictionary].         Anishenko et.al, in her work, analyzed and grouped the following categories of new terms: “Zoombie” – a someone who is affected by much screen time while zoom conferencing, “covidient” – in contrast to covidiot, a someone who follows quarantine rules to ensure the safety of the population in general, “vaccine hesitancy” – a reluctance to take, or fear of the consequences of taking the coronavirus vaccine, “quaranteams – people one chooses to live during a coronavirus pandemic, “infodemic” – disinformation.In the era of COVID-19, the word blending received a new wave of popularity in the media, and many"coroneologisms" / "coroneologism" (words that themselves represent a fusion of the words corona + neologism) was invented by journalists of the British press competing for a readership. For example, the blending of the word coronaverse (corona + universe) was first used in "the Guardian", lockstalgia (lockdown + nostalgia) in "the Times", and COVIDpreneurs (COVID + entrepreneurs) was coined "the Irish Times" [3,32 p].

The Russian language has also been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic situation. According to authors of monograph “Russian language during Coronavirus epoch”, the keywords of 2020 were “ковид (covid)” короновирус (coronavirus), “корона” (corona), “самоизоляция (lockdown)”, “удаленка (remote), “дистанционка (distant)”, “зум (Zoom)”. In given research, there is given the fact that, before 2020, there was the main verb “грипповать (to catch influenza), in 2020 there was a tendency of developing and functioning the 3000 new words and 30 verbs related to stem “corona” and “covid” in spoken language. We can see it in these examples, “ковидник, коронник, ковидный, коронный” (a person who tests positive to Covid-19), “предковидный (before the Covid-19), послековидный (after the Covid-19)”, the verbs “ковидить, короновируснуть” (to have Covid-19 symptoms)”, “заковидить (to infect someone with Covid-19)”etc. Authors believe, the terms as “карантика” it is the combination of words quarantine+picture means “quarantine jokes or love letters in quarantine”, “каратикулы” the combination of words quarantine + holiday means “the school holiday due to pandemic”, “корониалы” the combination of words corona + millenials means “babies are born during the pandemic” have been appeared by blending and go viral through a pandemic period [4, с. 18]. Alevizaki et.al research groups found out some new terms were implemented to the Russian language or changed the etymological meaning after analyzing the corpus of the Russian language through media. According to authors, “афтершок (aftershock)” is used in topics of the weather forecast, but with the pandemic case, there is appeared a new meaning, which can be used to describe “Shocking consequences after any incident unrelated to an earthquake” [1, p.99].

Methods and material

The main channel for promoting the latest borrowings and neologisms is the sphere of mass media. To investigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Kazakh language, we examined the language materials published in the Kazakhstan press. As the sources of research material, we have chosen Kazakh official press and internet information resources for 2020 March to November 2021. The research material was more than 1000 articles and comments, as the results, around 300 lexical units on the topic “Coronavirus” obtained by the continuous sampling method from “Egemen Kazakhstan” (327), “24kz” (348) “tengrinews.kz” (295), “kazinform” (187). In this article, we have taken those terms which were transferred to the active vocabulary of Kazakh speakers.

To find out the concept of the term “coronavirus” on the language consciousness of Kazakh people, we conducted an associative experiment. The survey was handled on the internet platform Google form, where the participants have been asked to write the first 5 terms that come to their mind when they hear the word “coronavirus”. The total number of respondents is 123. Overall, 598 reactions have been collected, the age difference of respondents from 18 to 65, 70 % of respondents are women, while 30 % is male respondents. The nation of respondents is 100 % Kazakh, the language of survey questions is Kazakh.

Results and discussions

The findings from media resources can be grouped into the following categories:

1. The terms from the vocabulary of limited use (professionalism). Professional terms getting into the quality press have experienced the determinologization process, that is, loss of special meaning as a result of its use in the national language. In connection with the pandemic in 2020, some medical terms (see table 1) have become generalized.

Table. 1

Medical terms used in Covid-19 pandemic.

2. The international terms are translated into Kazakh. The term“бетперде (mask)” is presented in Kazakh dictionary [Kazakh dictionary] as 1. the artificial face-covering in special events in carnavals, parties; 2. The curtain to face to protect from sunburn, wind, dust. 3. The shelter for a face is used in sport activities. As it is evident from the media resources, within the Covid-19 disease, the term “бетперде (mask)” is broadened its meaning into “медициналық бетперде (medical mask)”. As for the terms “екпе (vaccination)” is given in Kazakh dictionary [Kazakh dictionary] as vaccination - is a medication for the formation of immunity against infectious diseases caused by deadly microorganisms. In the Kazakhstani press, the usage of both terms “екпе”,“вакцинация” are available. For instance, the publication by “Egemen Kazakhstan” newspaper constitute the statements where the both variants of terms vaccination “екпе”and “вакцина”.“Бүгінде өңірде 66 екпе пункті жұмыс істейді (There are 66 vaccination centers in the region). “мүгедектер қатарындағы мүмкіндігі шектеулі адамдарды вакциналау үшін арнайы топ олардың үйіне барып, екпе жасап жүр (To vaccinate the disabled people, the special groups go to their homes and vaccinate)” [Egemen Kazakhstan, 2021].

Table 2.

The international terms are translated into Kazakh.

3. The terms appear as the national peculiarities of the Kazakhstani people. The pandemic situations bring special activities and restrictions as a form of protection from Covid-19 disease. Some new events required the naming. According to the comments left in mass media by Kazakhstani people, such terms are widely accepted and actively used in spoken language.

Table. 3

The terms are appeared as the national peculiarities of Kazakhstani people.

We structured the model of the lexica-semantic field of the concept of “coronavirus” based on our analysis of lexemes and expressions representing the concept of coronavirus as a phenomenon that has influenced society. Traditionally, the core, the nuclear zone, and the periphery are distinguished as part of the lexico-semantic field. The criterion for the allocation of these zones is the principle of frequency and denotative content of lexemes [2].

Table 4.

Associative field of the stimulus “coronavirus” in the Kazakh linguistic consciousness

As for the result of the associative experiment, the number of participants was 123, the total number of reactions was 598, 556 of them were identical, 42 reactions were announced once. Based on the responses of the Kazakh language speakers, we classified the associative experiment results in the following categories. It has been found the following semantic components of the conceptual image of “coronavirus” included the following expressions:

1. A threat to life: pandemic, epidemic, virus, covid-19, disease, pneumonia, weakness, fatigue, influenza, hospital, cough, shortness of breath, cough, high temperature, shortness of breath, infectious, immune system, bacteria, bronchitis;
2. Quarantine requirements: wearing a mask, sanitizing, hygiene, antiseptic, quarantine restrictions, isolation, incubation period, to protect the environment, stay at home, be safe, ambulance;
3. Emotional reaction: be panic, fatality, fear, danger, threatening, frustration, unexpected, uncertainty, grief, do not believe, astonish, do not touch my family, coronavirus go away, biological weapon;
4. Social changes: lockdown, crisis, stop to business, online, distant education, zoom work, red zone, Wuhan, mass vaccination, remote work, to keep distance;

The analysis of media sources and associative experiment proves that the concept of “coronavirus” has a vivid display in the language of Kazakh representatives. The language of Kazakh people has expanded with new medical terms, but in comparison to the Russian and English language, the formation of “Coronavirus” related new words is lower. From our point of view, mass media sources have an active tendency of translating international terms, in spite of it, verbalization of neologisms is active in the language of Kazakhstani people.

Conclusion

All over the world, the last two years have passed under the sign of the COVID-19 coronavirus, the ongoing pandemic finds linguistic reflection in language the consciousness of different nations. In our work we aimed to determine the linguistic changes affected by Covid-19 pandemic situations, and describe the concept “Coronavirus” in linguistic consciousness of Kazakh people. We came to the conclusion, the emergence of new “coronavirus” related lexical units directly affect the expansion of vocabulary.

References​:

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9. URL: https://egemen.kz/
10. URL: https://24.kz/ru/
11. URL: https://en.tengrinews.kz/
12. URL: https://www.inform.kz/en