How Has COVID-19 Impacted Our Language Use?

Francesca Pisano, Alessio Manfredini, Daniela Brachi, Luana Landi, Lucia Sorrentino, Marianna Bottone, Chiara Incoccia and Paola Marangolo ()
Additional contact information
Francesca Pisano: Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
Alessio Manfredini: Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
Daniela Brachi: Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
Luana Landi: Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
Lucia Sorrentino: Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
Marianna Bottone: Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy
Chiara Incoccia: IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, 00179 Rome, Italy
Paola Marangolo: Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 21, 1-10

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to severe consequences for people’s mental health. The pandemic has also influenced our language use, shaping our word formation habits. The overuse of new metaphorical meanings has received particular attention from the media. Here, we wanted to investigate whether these metaphors have led to the formation of new semantic associations in memory. A sample of 120 university students was asked to decide whether a target word was or was not related to a prime stimulus. Responses for pandemic pairs in which the target referred to the newly acquired metaphorical meaning of the prime (i.e., “trench”—“hospital”) were compared to pre-existing semantically related pairs (i.e., “trench”—“soldier”) and neutral pairs (i.e., “trench”—“response”). Results revealed greater accuracy and faster response times for pandemic pairs than for semantic pairs and for semantic pairs compared to neutral ones. These findings suggest that the newly learned pandemic associations have created stronger semantic links in our memory compared to the pre-existing ones. Thus, this work confirms the adaptive nature of human language, and it underlines how the overuse of metaphors evoking dramatic images has been, in part, responsible for many psychological disorders still reported among people nowadays.

Keywords: social media; misinformation; COVID-19 emergency; metaphors; semantic priming; social communication; psychological disorders; public health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/21/13836/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/21/13836/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:21:p:13836-:d:951932

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().