Sprache und Corona
Language and Corona

Summary/Abstract: This article is devoted to the socially relevant and highly current topic of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on language, as exemplified by German. The empirical basis is provided by news reports in German, especially from Austrian mass media. We explore the new vocabulary (including pejoratives) as well as the role of language in the crisis period, especially with regard to its expressive and emotive functions. In this context, we propose that verbal aggression, alongside its destructive functions (insulting, offending, humiliating), also fulfills a spectrum of positive functions. We present functions that the use of aggressive speech increasingly fulfills in this time of crisis, as well as new conflict situations and new target groups. The presence of emotive-expressive lexis became visible in COVID-19 discourse from the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic, because beyond the need to identify a new state of affairs, language activates its expressive and creative potential in times of crisis. This paper surveys the role of emotive-expressive lexis and verbal aggression in the new everyday life under Covid. The empirical material has been analyzed using the following methodological approaches: lexical- semantic, descriptive, and contextual analyses. The main goal of the paper is to explore the role of language in dealing with the pandemic and in shaping the new corona-related reality. Other goals and research tasks accompany this main objective: – Recording of corona neologisms, their functions and word formation models; – Exploring the role and functions of verbal aggression and emotive-expressive lexis in the pandemic period; – Exploring creative linguistic potentials (occasionalisms (nonce words), phraseologisms, parallel formations, puns) and verbalization of uncertainty or anxiety using humor.

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