AN ANALYSIS OF THE COVID-19 NEOLOGISMS IN SRI LANKAN PRINT MEDIA

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has made a significant impact on the daily lives of people and language has not been exempted. A considerable amount of our everyday lexicon is a reflection of the health crisis and its impact on society. New words are constantly added to the vocabulary while existing words have received new meanings and medical terminology has found its way into the everyday spoken and written discourse. In inventing and disseminating this new terminology, mass media plays a crucial role. Hence, this study is an attempt to analyze the common COVID-19 neologisms in Sri Lankan print media with emphasis on their word formation processes. The data was gathered based on a Sunday newspaper and the identified neologisms were categorized based on their structure. The findings revealed that acronyms, abbreviations, compounding, blending, coinages, derivation, backformation, semantic shift and borrowing are the most frequently used strategies in the formation of neologisms.