Lexicography of Coronavirus-related neologisms: An introduction

1 Background

This volume of Lexicographica. Series Maior focuses on lexicographic neology and neological lexicography concerning COVID-19 neologisms, featuring papers originally presented at the third Globalex Workshop on Lexicography and Neology (GWLN 20211). GWLN 2021 was held online in conjunction with Australex 2021,2 with a focus on neologisms arising in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Papers discussing various issues related to the detection of such neologisms – including new words, new meanings of existing words, and new multiword units – and their representation in lexicography and dictionaries were invited to offer cross-world views on lexicographic detection and representation of Coronavirus-driven neologisms for different languages. Similar challenges regarding COVID-19 neologisms and lexicography arise for any contemporary language, for example how to detect such neologisms (corpus analysis and editorial means of identification, evaluation of other data, e.g. blogs and chats) or how dictionary users can help with finding and informing about them. But also the extent of borrowing COVID-19 neologisms from other languages (and which ones), in contrast to the use of word formation processes to enlarge the Coronavirus-related vocabulary in a specific language, needs to be examined, and questions of prescriptive vs. descriptive lexicographic information on such neologisms need to be addressed.

The GWLN series began as a single event conjugated with the 22nd Biennial Meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America (DSNA) at Indiana University, Bloomington, in 20193 and included thirteen invited papers from around the world, of which eight formed a special issue of the DSNA’s journal Dictionaries, published the following year (2020, 41.14). GWLN-25 was planned in conjunction with the Euralex 2020 Congress (Alexandropoulos, Greece), but due to the COVID-19 pandemic it was partially held online (November 2020)6 and as a special session at Euralex 2020 online (in 2021),7 with selected papers published as a special issue of International Journal of Lexicography (Klosa-Kückelhaus/Kernerman 2021).8

Lexicography has been around for thousands of years and has always had to adapt to developments in society and language, apparently more than ever in the last generation with its increasingly rapid and radical technological changes. Neology has been there forever, driving language from the start and so-to-speak inciting lexicography. Likewise, in recent decades neology has been drawing more attention in research communities and inspiring new practical applications, such as at university or national language observatories or in the language technology industry, as well as with the general public. The speed of novelty in daily life accelerates and the volume of innovations grows exponentially – all defined by language as well as affected by and affecting language. Altogether, there is greater interest in neologisms and in the role of lexicographic resources to capture and disseminate them to the world.

The overall aim of GWLN and its corresponding publications is to explore this intersection of neology and lexicography worldwide, uncover the common factors and highlight individual features, expose and share the findings with each other and enhance mutual understanding, professional competence, and user satisfaction. The main issues in question begin with the identification of neologisms and go on to comprise their categorization and lexicographic treatment and representation. As such, the description in our introduction to the special issue of Dictionaries (Klosa-Kückelhaus/Kernerman 2020) is appropriate here, too, and we reproduce it with slight adjustments:

“Neology constitutes a natural, dynamic and multilateral part of all living human languages, whether as a reflection or for facilitation of linguistic communication, and lexicographic interest in neologisms is at least as old as dictionaries themselves. There is a vast field of research of neologisms, pertaining to their origin (stemming from the given language as in new word formation, or loan words from other languages including the dominance of English today, as well as combining both), distribution (in general language and in domain-specific language, that is terminology), identification (applying corpus linguistics methods, editorial methods, user generated candidates, and comparison of different methods), evaluation (such as in blogs and chats), and more. The general definition of neologisms as applied here refers to new words, new multiword units, new elements of word formation, and new meanings of either of them, and addresses lexicography-driven or -oriented aspects, including:

• How to interoperate lexicographic datasets with online resources and incorporate neologisms into dictionaries (the media, formatting, labelling, etc.)

• How to deal with grammatical/orthographic/pronunciation variation (descriptive vs. prescriptive approaches)

• How to explain meaning with/without encyclopaedic information, and how to use illustrations and audio-visual media

• How well are neologisms that are integrated in dictionaries accepted by the community (issues of rejection of new words and language purism)

• How differently, if at all, should neologisms be treated in different dictionary types (e.g. in historical comprehensive ones as opposed to those focusing on current usage; in monolingual vs. bilingual dictionaries; in special dictionaries of neologisms; in special domain dictionaries)

• How to deal with neologisms that are no longer new and with those no longer used

• How can dictionary users help with finding and informing about neologisms

The papers in this volume pursue the discussion on some of these aspects, presenting state-of-the-art research into neology [specific to the COVID-19 pandemic] and ideas on modern lexicographic treatment of neologisms in various dictionary types.”

2 This volume

The thirteen papers in this volume focus on ten languages: one Altaic (Korean), one Finno-Ugric (Hungarian), two Germanic (English and German), four Romance (French, Italian, [Brazilian and European] Portuguese and [Pan-American and European] Spanish), and one Slavic (Croatian), as well as the Sign Language of New Zealand. Specialized dictionaries of neologisms are discussed as well as general language ones, monolingual, bilingual and multilingual lexical resources, print and electronic dictionaries. Questions regarding terminology as well as general language and standard and norm regarding COVID-19 neologisms are raised and different methods of detecting candidates in media corpora, as well as by user contributions, are discussed.

The papers are broadly arranged in four groups of three (and four) papers each. The first group features papers regarding English, German, and Korean, respectively, evolving from systemic neological and lexicographic research carried out in their authors’ institutions for some years, which conveys solid support and wide perspectives to their findings. The second consists of three papers regarding Spanish neologisms in traditional and upcoming lexicographic contexts from Europe and Latin America. The third presents work on Croatian, Hungarian, Italian, and Portuguese in Portugal and Brazil, i.e. to some extent lesser used languages, which is no less pertinent as for dealing with similar issues. The fourth group of papers extends beyond mainstream lexicography to study COVID-19 neology in relation to collaborative editing in Wiktionary, to terminology, and to New Zealand sign language. Together, this collection offers rich insights that sometimes overlap while remaining unique.

In The Oxford English Dictionary and the language of Covid-19, Danica Salazar and Kate Wild offer insight into how the editorial team working on this renowned historical dictionary of English reacted to the challenges posed by the rapid expansion of new vocabulary during the Coronavirus pandemic: “The lexical adaptation necessitated by this global health crisis has been unprecedented in speed and scope, and in response, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has continually revised its coverage, publishing special updates of Covid-19-related words in 2020 outside of its usual quarterly publication cycle.” The Oxford Languages’ monitor corpus of English and other text databases were used to monitor the development of pandemic-related words, and the authors describe how new lexemes (most prominently COVID-19) and words with new meanings (e.g. bubble) or new significance...