The image of COVID-19 in the Russian linguistic consciousness

INTRODUCTION. The widespread spread of COVID-19 in Russia could not but affect the Russian linguistic consciousness, in which the associative thesaurus of the 21st century pandemic is being formed to one degree or another. Russian-language information resources are full of information about the new virus and the need for vaccination against it. These topics are actively discussed by the entire Russian-speaking population. The aim is to explore the image of COVID-19 in the Russian linguistic consciousness in the aspect of syntagmatic, paradigmatic and thematic associative thesaurus in two time periods: May–June 2020 and May–June 2021.

MATERIALS AND METHODS. The research material is the National Russian Language Corps, social network’s hashtags, printed and electronic content « Rossiyskaya Gazeta and RBC newspapers. The associative experiment method is used to identify syntagmatic and paradigmatic reactions and thematic groups.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. The analysis is an attempt to demonstrate the formation state of the concept of COVID-19 in the linguistic consciousness of Russians. The subject of the study was the syntactic function of the COVID-19 lexeme and the results of an associative experiment.

CONCLUSION. The syntactic function of the COVID-19 lexeme, its lexical compatibility and connotation have been identified. It has been established that the perception of the COVID-19 epidemic in the linguistic consciousness is assessed as a typical characteristic of modernity and is recognized as part of reality along with the problems of global changes in ecology and climate and exists along with such concepts as globalization, digitalization and convergence. 

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