Lockdown, Pandemic:
Epidemic related vocabulary has become the annual vocabulary selection of major institutions.
The author of the articles in the Guardian is critic and writer David Shariatmadari. In 2019, he also wrote an article in the Guardian to inventory the most key words of the year. In this year's article, he took a look at 10 2020 keywords, a large part of which are related to the epidemic. In addition, words such as "BLM" (abbreviation of the "Blak Lives Matter" movement) were also listed on the list.
Source: SOPA Images/Shutterstock/Getty Images/TASS
In addition to "Lockdown", "Pandemic", "Herd immunity", etc. directly related to the epidemic, there are some words that indirectly reflect people's living conditions during the epidemic. For example, the word "Zoom" is also listed. This real-time video software is frequently used during the epidemic and is used to meet the work and communication needs of people who are isolated at home. "Zoom" has even begun to become a daily convenient term similar to "Google". The word "Doomscrolling" can be translated as "doomscrolling" and "desperate sliding", which is used to describe people's mood of getting epidemic information because they are trapped at home and brushing their smartphones, and they are getting more anxious as they brush. In Shariatmadari's view, especially in the early stages of the outbreak, as the scope of infection continues to expand, the information constantly refreshed is almost all bad news. This word can very accurately summarize people's general psychological experience.
The annual vocabulary selected by institutions such as Collins Dictionary and Oxford Dictionary have become an important reference for this article. The word "lockdown" was announced by the Collins Dictionary as this year's Vocabulary of the Year. Collins said the term "encapsulates the shared experience of billions of people." Collins defines “lockdown” as “imposing strict restrictions on travel, social interaction and the use of public places.” In 2020, Collins recorded more than 250,000 uses of the word "lockdown" and last year, that number was 4,000. In the "Top 10 List" of Collins's Vocabulary of the Year, there are also many words related to the new crown epidemic, such as "leave", "key workers", "self-isolation", "social safety distancing" and "coronavirus".
At the same time, similar to the article in The Guardian, the Collins Dictionary also observed that many words that reflect social unrest appeared frequently in 2020. The term “BLM” has seen a sharp rise in usage following the death of George Floyd. The popularity of the term "TikToker" reflects the expansion of the user influence of sharing shared content on social media such as TikTok.
Another organization that is famous for selecting "Vocabulary of the Year" has selected the Vocabulary of the Year as "iso". The Australian National Dictionary Center is located at the Australian National University and has close contacts with the Oxford Dictionary. Since 2006, the Centre has released the most important vocabulary of the year, which is selected by the editorial department and is considered to have a "prominent position in Australia's social and cultural environment" during the year. According to ABC, most of the vocabulary listed by the center this year are also related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the only shortlisted word in the vocabulary that has nothing to do with it is "Black summer", which is related to the Australian bushfires that occurred in 2019-2020.
"iso" is actually the abbreviation of the word "isolation" (isolation, isolation). The Australian National Dictionary Center believes that among many words related to the new crown epidemic, this word is best used to represent the changes in our lives by the epidemic. Editor-in-chief Amanda Laugesen said that the word formation of this word belongs to the unique pattern of Australian English abbreviation, and the abbreviation is significantly more frequently used in Australia than in other countries.
iso hairstyle, source: Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images
Senior Researcher Mark Gwynn, a center senior researcher, has the same finding, "The word has been used frequently since March, and you can find such usage elsewhere in the world, but it is especially popular in Australia."In a report in the Guardian, Gwynn also said that "iso" was selected not only because it has "a Australian local character", but also because of its strong linguistic productivity. People use "iso" to refer to "X in the epidemic", creating many humorous uses. "iso baking" refers to cooking together at home in isolation, while "iso" head shape refers to a hairstyle created by oneself during the epidemic because they could not go out to cut their hair. Laugesen also provided an example to ABC: "We did "iso baking" and cut my child a "iso" head shape. "iso" bodies have become a kind of meme on social media, Gwynn said: "They have been widely adopted by the media and Australian pop culture."
Gwynn believes that many words related to the new crown epidemic are related to medical terms, but iso reflects the mentality and culture during the epidemic, and it can accurately summarize people's daily life during the epidemic. Gwynn told The Guardian that the vocabulary may continue to be popular after 2020. “It will become a unique way for us to discuss this period.”
Another important dictionary in Australia, Macquarie, also selects the annual vocabulary of the year. Unlike the Australian National Dictionary Center, Macquarie will not only form a selection committee to screen important vocabulary, but also opens a public vote to vote for the most important and favorite annual vocabulary in the public's mind. The annual vocabulary selection will be held in January of the next year. At present, the 2020 Macquarie annual vocabulary selection activity is underway.
Macquarie official website wrote: "2020 is a long and unique year, which means we will make some changes to the selection of the best vocabulary of the year." The Oxford Dictionary also changed in the selection of the annual vocabulary of the year. As one of the most well-known annual vocabulary selection activities, the selection results of the Oxford Dictionary this year are quite surprising. The Oxford Dictionary did not select the vocabulary of the year for the first time, describing 2020 as a "year in which a word cannot be summarized completely." They selected a series of words including "coronavirus" and "lockdown" as alternatives.
New words, old words, new meanings and professional terms are out of the circle:
New ecosystem of language use under the COVID-19 epidemic
Although the vocabulary selected by different institutions is different, the COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected people's language use is a consensus among research institutions. The aforementioned Laughson said that 2020 was a "harvest year" for linguists, and the virus pandemic added hundreds of terms to the language database. By analyzing a huge corpus of more than 11 billion words, the editors of the Oxford Dictionary pointed out that the frequency of new words has increased dramatically over the past 12 months. The Oxford Dictionary report also pointed out: "During the COVID-19 pandemic, the English-speaking world is accumulating vocabulary at an extremely fast pace, and many new vocabulary have quickly become the core part of daily language use."
However, there are actually not many new vocabulary that have really spawned by the COVID-19 epidemic, and the more typical ones are COVID-19. A special update conducted by the Oxford Dictionary in July this year focused on analyzing the impact of the epidemic on language use. It found that compared with the emergence of new words, many changes in language use are reflected in changes in the usage and meaning of old words. For example, the "isolation" used for high frequency has actually been widely used. But the term “self-isolation” originally meant seeking asylum when disaster strikes, but now it is used to express long-term social isolation. The term "social distancing" was first used in 1957, but initially it was a social attitude, namely, to keep distance from others in social relationships. Nowadays, it is more described as a physical distance that people should maintain in order to prevent infection. For example, the "elbow bump" (elbow bump) selected as the Collins Dictionary's annual vocabulary option, the two people's elbow bump, as the epidemic continues to grow, is gradually evolving into a formal social posture. However, when the avian influenza, swine influenza and Ebola viruses broke out before, this way of greeting has actually been promoted by health officials from various countries.
EU leaders used elbow to replace handshakes Image source: Associated Press
Another important change in language use is that many obscure medical terms have begun to "get out of the circle" and become the focus of public discussion. The report released by the Oxford Dictionary when it was updated in July pointed out that according to convention, dictionary editing will only store a certain scientific and technical professional vocabulary when it is widely used outside its discipline, and whether the drug name is stored is often based on this standard.
The epidemic has brought about the public discussion of two drugs, Hydroxychloroquine and Dexamethasone, which have been discussed whether they have the efficacy of resisting the coronavirus. In the 2020 vocabulary reviewed by the Guardian, the word "herd immunity" as a professional medical word has also triggered heated public discussion in media from various countries. According to the Oxford Dictionary report, epidemiological terms such as "R Number" and "community transmission" have become very common in daily discussions.
In addition, the new crown epidemic has also spawned the use of many mixed words. For example, “zoombombing” is used to refer to strangers who suddenly break into a zoom meeting, and “quarantini” is used to refer to a cocktail made during quarantine. Those who ignore safety advice from the health department are called "covidiot", the German term "hamsterkauf" means purchasing behavior due to panic, and "Infodemic" means receiving a large amount of unproven information about the epidemic, etc.
Infectious diseases are intertwined with the process of human civilization development, and language is an important witness to this entanglement. A word that describes infectious diseases is included in the dictionary and often marks an important moment in the history of human civilization. For example, according to records, the term “self-quarantine” was first used to describe the story that took place in the village of Eyam, which prevents the spread of the disease through heroic self-isolation. The report on the official website of the Oxford Dictionary reads: "As a long-standing dictionary, our record of vocabulary shows us how historic predecessors respond to the epidemic they witnessed and experienced." The human language in 2020 may also be witnessed to the important moments of human civilization and will be recorded in history.
reference link:
https://public.oed.com/blog/the-language-of-covid-19/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_the_year
https://theconversation.com/how-covid-19-is-changing-the-english-language-146171
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/26/doomscrolling-in-lockdown-the-most-influential-words-of-2020
https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/resources/view/word/of/the/year/
https://www.abc.net.au/ne ws/2020-11-17/iso-is-the-australian-word-of-the-year-dictionary/12890260
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54878910
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/17/iso-named-2020s-word-of-the-year-by-australia n-national-dictionary-centre
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/23/oed-says-2020-too-many-potential-words-of-the-year-to-name-just-one-oxford-english-dictionary
Author｜Liu Yaguang
Editor｜Zhang Jin
Proofreading｜Li Shihui
