Covid-19 Trending Neologisms in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected every single aspect of life including conversational practices both online and offline. New lexical and sociolinguistic changes have become part of our lives, which is especially vivid in the emergence of Covid-19 trending neologisms. The present study utilizes the descriptive-qualitative design in the analysis of morphological structures of neologisms in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian languages. Specifically, the paper is based on the analysis of morphological structures of the neologisms that use the discourse of the Covid pandemic as a base/modifier, i.e., that contain either corona- / korona-, coronavirus- / koronavirus-, Covid-19- / Kovid-19-, and Covid- / Kovid- as a base of the neologism. The dataset consists of over 10,000 headlines related to Covid-19 information, found and collected in online newspaper sections Koronavirus – Dnevni Avaz (Bosnia and Herzegovina) between March 2020 and March 2021. The results show that there is an intensive usage of the Covid-19 neologisms, which manifests the dynamics of language as new words are used, added, and integrated into conversational practices daily. Moreover, the majority of these neologisms use the discourse of the Covid pandemic as a base/modifier. This paper aims to shed light not only on the meanings of the new words and their structure and function, but it can also serve as a foundation for creating a special Covid-19 glossary on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Keywords

• covid-19
• neologisms
• bosnian/croatian/serbian languages
• word-formation