Language and the pandemic: The construction of semantic frames in Greek-German comparison

Abstract

This paper aims to provide an insight into the way native speakers of different first languages (L1) who live in the same country and are therefore influenced to the same degree by the current Covid-19 pandemic (e.g. share the same everyday experiences and are confronted with the same linguistic input in the same context) frame Covid-19 related events. More specifically, a comparison between the framework of L1 speakers of German and L1 speakers of Greek, all residing in Greece during the pandemic. Our goal is to unveil commonalities and differences in the structuring of concepts using a frame-semantic approach. In order to investigate the frames that are indexed when talking about experiences, topics, and concepts newly introduced by the Covid-19 pandemic, we chose to build a small bilingual corpus based on participants’ answers in surveys in the respective languages. We use preliminary data to evaluate the feasibility of the theoretical as well as the methodological approach. This paper presents the pilot phase of a broader project whose final conclusions will be available in 2021.

Keywords

• frame semantics
• corpora
• cross-linguistic analysis
• covid-19
• pandemic