Semantics of the virolect with particular regard to the Hungarian language

Abstract

Introduction: the COVID-19 pandemic has a major impact on the various arenas of communication. The most striking language changes can be observed in the lexicon. Since 2020, thousands of new pandemic-related words and phrases, so-called virologisms, appeared in many languages of the world, including the Hungarian, English, German and Russian. It is worthwhile to examine virologisms from a word-formation aspect and a semantic aspect. The present study focuses mainly on the semantics of the Hungarian virologisms. Linguistic examples are reviewed from the aspect of lexical (i.e. word) relationships such as synonymy, polysemy, or homonymy. Objective: to identify the semantics of virologisms of the Hungarian language (in comparison with the English, German and Russian). Research materials: published articles, studies and dictionaries in the Hungarian, Russian and English languages with particular regard to the Karanténszótár, COVIDictionary and Slovarj russkogo jazyka koronavirusnoj epochi (Dictionary of the Russian Language of the Coronavirus Era). Results and novelty of the research: to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no comprehensive work presenting an analysis of virologisms from a semantic aspect has been published, up to the beginning of 2022 in the Hungarian or in any other language they are familiar with, as the majority of the studies approach the problem from a formal perspective. The present study points out intra-lexical and inter-lexical semantic relationships (e.g. synonymy, polysemy, and homonymy) that can be observed between lexemes belonging to the same language register and those belonging to different language registers: while synonymy makes the talk about the pandemic more colorful, polysemy and homonymy can sometimes be a source of misunderstanding. © 2022 Ob-Ugric Institute of Applied Researches and Development. All rights reserved.