- With the coronavirus pandemic, a new vocabulary and new expressions have emerged.
- The words "Coronavirus", "Covid-19", "barrier gestures", "confinement", "Whatsappero", "clapping", or even "social distancing" are on everyone's lips.
- Analysis of the phenomenon with Paola Pietrandrea, professor of Language Sciences at the University of Lille.
A new language to describe a new situation! With the coronavirus pandemic, a new vocabulary and new expressions have emerged, witnessing the upheaval that a large part of the world population is currently living. The words "Coronavirus", "Covid-19", "barrier gestures", "confinement", or even "social distancing" are on everyone's lips. In a lighter register, the terms "Cloud Rave", "clapping" or "Whatsappero" are now part of our daily lives. Reflections on the power of these words.
"All this lexicon and these neologisms, which are created, have a very important social interest", estimates Paola Pietrandrea, professor of Sciences of the Language at the University of Lille, researcher who studies the mechanisms which allow the language to reach a socially shared construction.
"Find words to say the situation we are living in"
We have all observed in recent weeks the appearance of a new vocabulary in our everyday language. "There is an acceleration of lexical creation at the moment and many neologisms are emerging", also notes the researcher. Why has our language changed so quickly? “We are faced with an unprecedented situation and we need to name it. It's pretty trivial, but it's important to say it. We have to find words to say the situation we are living in, ”says the expert.
This appearance of a new term also responds to deeper needs. “We also need, and this is very much linked to lexical creation and the appearance of neologisms, of a group identity. We are more than we were yesterday, we have become something else and we have to understand what we are being at the moment ”, analyzes Paola Pietrandrea.
"Being with others requires a common language"
This is also why we have built new "rituals" such as applause at 8 pm or songs on the balconies in Italy and "brought about a new way of speaking". "This contributes to creating an identity for this somewhat bizarre group," notes the researcher. Just like the lexical creation which is used to weld the new group. This is a phenomenon that is very commonly observed, with for example the appearance of slangs. Having new words allows us to recognize ourselves in a new dimension. "
We must invent new ways of being with others as we cannot be physically with others: "being with others requires a common language", reminds the researcher.
With the accelerated spread of the coronavirus, many countries, including India on Tuesday, have placed their nationals in containment. In total, there are now more than 2.6 billion people called to stay at home around the world. "This is what is very new in this situation, it is that the group is not small and local, but immense and global, and goes beyond borders and linguistic borders," notes the specialist.
Inventing a common language is "very typical of all groups finding exceptional situations", what is new "is that the group is also enlarged", insists Paola Pietrandrea.
"All these new words that emerge are borrowings"
"All of these new words that are emerging are borrowings," explains the researcher. And these loans fall into two categories.
On the one hand, there are borrowings from the language of specialists. “To speak of“ barrier gestures ”was done in the specialist language of medicine. This expression has now become common in common parlance. There is no longer any mediation between the language of medicine and the common language ”, notes Paola Pietrandrea
On the other, there are borrowings from foreign languages. "The group crosses linguistic borders, hence the borrowing from one language to another and the layers from one language to another," she underlines. We are all connected to the Internet and we now often speak several languages. “Layers and borrowings are therefore done more quickly.
We should therefore not be surprised by the number of anglicisms that appear, ”explains the researcher.
Words like "cloud rave", which designates sets of DJs to live live from home, or "clapping", which designates the daily applause from the balconies and windows for the nursing staff, are anglicisms.
We also tend to speak French which "does not follow the morphological rules of French", observes the researcher. An expression like "social distancing" is modeled after the English expression "social distancing". "We also find it modeled in Spanish and Italian," says Paola Pietrandrea.
Among the many changes that we have all undergone due to the coronavirus, this "newspeak" or this "neoparler" is not like in George Orwell's 1984 novel a language whose purpose is the annihilation of thought, but what new language serves to unite us against adversity.
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