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Annette Klosa-Kückelhaus and Ilan Kernerman (Eds.). Lexicography of Coronavirus-related Neologisms

Annette Klosa-Kückelhaus and Ilan Kernerman (Eds.). Lexicography of Coronavirus-related Neologisms. 2022, vi + 306 pages. ISBN 978-3-1107-9556-1 (Hardcover); 978-3-1107-9808-1 (ePDF); 978-3-1107-9831-9 (ePUB). Lexicographica. Series Maior 163. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Price €109.95 (Hardcover), online version (ePDF/ePUB).

Neology has been an integral component of language since its inception, serving as a driving force and motivating factor for the field of lexicography. The lexicons of all languages are constantly developing. The same is the case with coronavirus-related neologisms. Coronavirus-related neologisms have emerged in response to the unprecedented pandemic situation, revealing the adaptability of language to reflect new social realities. These words not only focus on a specific period and topic but also display distinctive tendencies in grammar and semantics. They provide a rich area of study for lexicographers interested in word formation, the relationship between language and discourse communities, and the identification of neologisms associated with the pandemic.

The Lexicography of Coronavirus-related Neologisms presents a comprehensive and cutting-edge exploration of coronavirus-related neologisms. It contains 13 research papers that investigate the study of neology and lexicography in an extensive variety of languages, including English, Korean, Hungarian, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Croatian, and the New Zealand Sign Language. These papers cover a wide range of topics related to lexicography, with a particular focus on research concerning neologisms that have emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as innovative approaches to handling such neologisms in various types of dictionaries.

This collection of papers showcases the cross-cultural perspectives of lexicographers from diverse linguistic backgrounds. In the introduction, the editors divide the papers into four groups, which discuss various lexical resources. The first group examines coronavirus-related neologisms in English, German and Korean. The second group focuses on coronavirus-related neologisms in the Spanish language. The third group investigates lesser-used languages. The final group explores COVID-19 neology in relation to collaborative editing in Wiktionary and New Zealand Sign Language.

The first group's research investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on lexicography, as well as the strategies employed to overcome the challenges presented by the rapid influx of neologisms. Based on their findings, the authors analyze the effects of the pandemic on lexicographic methods and the emergence of new neologisms in English, German and Korean.

The paper 'The Oxford English Dictionary and the language of Covid-19' examines how the editorial team of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) responded to the lexical adjustments necessitated by the global health crisis. The research explains how the OED utilized the Oxford Linguistics' Monitor English Corpus and other textual databases to monitor the development of coronavirus-related vocabulary. Furthermore, it explains how the detection and processing of new words and words with new meanings were accomplished by revising existing entries and introducing new ones.

The adoption of both retrospective and proactive approaches to record coronavirus-related neologisms is explored in the paper 'German Corona-related neologisms and their lexicographic representation'. It investigates how the Leibniz Institute for the German Language (IDS) has implemented these approaches to capture and document coronavirus-related neologisms. This integration of approaches allows for comprehensive coverage of COVID-19 neologisms in the German language, providing information on new lexemes, meanings, and usages throughout the pandemic's development.

The Korean researchers have contributed a paper titled 'The emergence and spread of Korean COVID-19 neologisms in news articles and user comments and their lexicographic description', which focuses on the occurrence and spread of Korean COVID-19 neologisms in news articles and user comments, as well as their dictionary definitions. It examines the frequency of occurrence and usage trends of these neologisms, and discusses their implications for lexicographic research. The findings indicate that comment data is invaluable for the lexicographic description of neologisms, as it provides pragmatic information on and the socio-cultural background of neologisms. Comments reflect the emotions and stances of a multitude of commenters on relevant neologisms, offering dictionary users and future generations fresh, raw examples of real-life language for neologisms.

The papers in the second group analyze coronavirus-related neologisms in the Spanish language from various perspectives, such as identification, classification, inclusion in dictionaries, and their usage in technical fields.

'Lexicographic detection and representation of Spanish neologisms in the COVID-19 pandemic' presents a comprehensive analysis of coronavirus-related neologisms in the Spanish language. This paper shows the diverse range of COVID-19 neologisms in Spanish, some of which are fleeting and transitory, referred to as "non-dictionarizable neologisms" (p. 80), while others gain acceptance and become part of the standard language through lexicalization, known as "dictionarizable neologisms" (p. 84). It emphasizes the critical role that lexicography plays in the development of neologisms. On the one hand, it helps to fix the usage of neologisms in the language, on the other hand, it serves as a criterion for lexical evolution.

This discussion is further developed in the paper titled 'Spanish neologisms during the COVID-19 pandemic: Changing criteria for their inclusion and representation in dictionaries'. It investigates the inclusion of coronavirus-related neologisms in various dictionaries, including general language dictionaries of Spanish, a bilingual English-Spanish dictionary, and a Spanish neologism dictionary. It delineates the criteria for the inclusion and treatment of the neologisms in these dictionaries and examines the limitations and advantages of exclusively gathering data from written press sources.

The final paper in this group, titled 'Specialized voices in the 23rd edition of the Diccionario de la lengua española: Analysis of the COVID-19 field and its neologisms', focuses on the incorporation of technical neologisms related to COVID-19 into the authoritative Spanish language dictionary the Diccionario de la Lengua Española (DLE). The paper discusses the rapid expansion of COVID-19 vocabulary and its implications for lexicography and terminology research. This expansion is viewed as an opportunity for researchers to propose consistent solutions for including scientific and specialized words in the DLE and other Spanish dictionaries. The authors suggest abandoning ambiguous standards for the inclusion or exclusion of scientific vocabulary, technical definitions that are not readily understandable by a general readership, imprecisions in conceptualization, and erratic ascriptions of thematic designations.

The third group of papers investigates lesser-used languages, such as Hungarian, Croatian and Portuguese in Portugal and Brazil, uncovering analogous issues that exist in more commonly used European languages.

'How the COVID-19 pandemic is changing the Hungarian language: Building a domain-specific Hungarian/Italian/English dictionary of the COVID-19 pandemic' describes the process of compiling the Trilingual COVID-19 Dictionary (TCD), which includes Hungarian, Italian and English. The process of creating the TCD covers various aspects, including corpus selection, terminological extraction, a draft dictionary, and formatting. The TCD also contains morphological analysis of neologisms, which provides insight into the trends and patterns in neologism formation and frequency of use in Hungarian. The analysis of Hungarian coronavirus-related neologisms indicates that compounding and derivation are the most frequent methods of neologism formation, but syntagms, blending and semantic extension are also used. It explores the role of English in neologism creation, as well as loanwords, calques, and adaptations in Hungarian and Italian.

In 'Coronavirus-related neologisms: A challenge for Croatian standardology and lexicography', the discussion centers on the question of determining which coronavirus-related neologisms, collected from media corpora and online sources, should be included in general language dictionaries for Croatian. In this paper, the researchers distinguish between Croatian neologisms and loanwords/loan translations, while stressing the importance of providing prescriptive information in response to the high number of user questions regarding orthography, morphology, word formation, usage in sentences, and meaning for all types of neologisms.

The formation and incorporation of coronavirus-related neologisms in Portuguese media discourse, as well as their inclusion in dictionaries, are explored in the other papers of this group.

Focusing on neologisms that incorporate the components "coronavirus", "COVID-19", "pandemic" and the prefix "tele-", 'The neologisms of the COVID-19 pandemic in European Portuguese: From media to dictionary' provides various examples of how these neologisms are integrated into novel morphological structures. The researchers investigate the emergence of coronavirus-related neologisms in press and social media, evaluate their inclusion in European Portuguese dictionaries, and affirm the crucial role of lexical neology in the COVID-19 domain.

A corpus-based investigation of Covid-19 terminology in Brazilian Portuguese is presented in the paper 'COVID-19 terminology and its dissemination to a non-specialized public in Brazil'. It analyzes and discusses the characteristics of the terminology, including the frequent use of the adjective "novo" (meaning "new"), the pluralization of terms, and the resemantization of some terminological units. This research underscores the need to compile a dictionary for non-specialized readers in the medical field.

'Neoterm or neologism? A closer look at the determinologisation process' examines the formation, categorization, and lexicographic description of new lexical units in Portuguese media discourse. The paper specifically investigates words created with the prefix "covid" and raises the question of whether these words should be classified as neoterms. It takes a further look at the challenges of incorporating new terms into the lexicon, including determining their definitions and appropriate domain labels.

The examination of COVID-19 neology in relation to New Zealand Sign Language and collaborative editing in Wiktionary are the topics of the fourth group of papers, which extend beyond mainstream lexicography.

'Neologisms in New Zealand Sign Language: A case study of COVID-19 pandemic-related signs' analyzes the neologisms that arose in New Zealand Sign Language as a response to the pandemic. The paper investigates how these neologisms can be incorporated into the Online Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language. According to the research findings, the newly formed signs were created through diverse strategies such as semantic extension, derivation or compounding, and borrowing from other sign languages. Nevertheless, incorporating these signs into the dictionary also presents challenges since the signs must be standardized and widely adopted by the Deaf community.

The final paper in the book titled 'Using Wiktionary revision history to uncover lexical innovations related to topical events: Application to Covid-19 neologisms' presents a novel approach to identify and monitor new lexical innovations that are linked to topical events. The method is based on analyzing the Wiktionary revision histories of extensively modified articles from the active online communities of the English and French versions of Wiktionary. The results of the study suggest that this method is effective in tracking lexical innovations and can provide useful insights into the linguistic responses to current events.

The Lexicography of Coronavirus-related Neologisms is an excellent illustration of advanced research in European countries regarding coronavirus-related neologisms, featuring relevant and well-contextualized research approaches. The book presents research papers authored by experts with diverse linguistic backgrounds, exhibiting exceptional writing skills and professionalism in the field of lexicography. To enhance comprehension, the papers are furnished with ample examples, pictures and figures. If the book were to be reprinted in the future, I would suggest adding chapter numbers to the table of contents. This would make it easier for readers to navigate through the book and find specific chapters they are interested in. Nevertheless, The Lexicography of Coronavirus-related Neologisms is a valuable resource for professional researchers, teachers and students of linguistics and lexicography worldwide. The findings of these papers may provide inspiration and ideas for the study of neologism, especially in the field of lexicographic compilation.

 

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Hebei Provincial Fundamental Research Projects for Higher Education Institutions (Project No. JSQ2021003).

 

Jian Zhou

North China University of Science and Technology

Tangshan

Heilongjiang University

Harbin

China

(zhou.jian@mail.ru)

and

Shuliang Dong

North China University of Science and Technology

Tangshan

China

(Corresponding Author, shuliangly@163.com)