Covid-19 anti-proverbs in russian

Abstract

In the article, the authors analyze Russian anti-proverbs about COVID-19 that became popular on the internet during the pandemic. The anti-proverbs under study describe the most important parts of people’s lives that were changed during the pandemic: the new disease, life in quarantine, working in quarantine, and fighting with the disease. These five spheres allowed dividing all the anti-proverbs into five semantic modules bearing the same names. The substitutes in the anti-proverbs are semantically related to the four semantic fields: disease, health, work and internet. The theoretical ground for the study of anti-proverbs is based on the idea that they are syntactically independent units that express certain wisdom and are used as means of language play. They produce an emotional impact on people and thus become a tool for influencing social opinion. The mechanisms of the creation of the anti-proverbs are studied in the article and the most widely used mechanisms are revealed.