Covid-19 Realities In Yakut Media Texts

Abstract

This research paper discusses and considers the language representation of COVID-19 terms in the Yakut media texts. It reveals that a language transfer of information about a new situation is characterized by the presence of neologisms, change and update of the meanings of existing words in contexts associated with a changed reality, transition of medical terms from the professional field to the sphere of mass use. The research sources are articles from "Kyym" and "Sakha Sire" local newspapers. The results of the study record the emergence of new words and the revitalization of previously uncommon words; it also allows to track the reaction of native speakers of the Yakut language to lexical and semantic and word-formation innovations. These results followed an online survey that was conducted among five age groups of Yakutia's population, covering about 350 respondents. The survey showed that middle-aged informants rather prefer the nomination of this infection as 'ковид' (covid) than, for example, 'коронавирус' (coronavirus) for the language economy reasons. Among older respondents, the most frequent was an outdated word 'хамсык', the appearance of which on the pages of local newspapers was recorded in March 2020. Recently, its widespread use has been noticed in the speech of presenters and journalists of local TV and radio channels. Along with this word, the use of the originally "infectious" lexical unit 'дьаҥ', which previously reminded of its existence in information bulletins during the spread of an acute respiratory viral infections and influenza, has noticeably increased.