The Linguistic Realisation of “Pandemic” Concept in Contemporary English

Abstract

A concept can be treated in two different ways: as a linguistic-cognitive phenomenon and a cultural one. The components of the conceptual system are perceived as individual signals created while reflecting information about this world. The purpose of the paper is to compare, analyse and classify the linguistic structure of the concept of "pandemic" in the modern English language. The concept of “pandemic” is socially important as a key element included in the linguistic picture of the world of almost every language nowadays. The concept of pandemic comprises various nominative units: different grammatical forms of the word “pandemic”, phrases with the word “pandemic”, synonyms to the word “pandemic”, pandemic-related words. The research methodology consists of selection of cognitive classification features and further ranking their brightness by the frequency principle. The concept of pandemic was analysed according to the combination of the following linguistic methods: acquisition, computer analysis, quantitative method, induction and deduction. The first stage of the research included grammatical analysis of the empirical material. In the second stage of the research neologisms (new words), new meanings of the existing words and new collocations were found.  The research has proved the recent changes in the structure and perception of the concept of "pandemic" in the contemporary English language. The vocabulary of the English language has been, on the one hand, enriched while, on the other hand, has narrowed the meanings of some particular words. Further research is prospective as the concept of the pandemic still tends to be enriched.