Philippine E-Journals

The Pandemic Neologisms: Discovering the Generational Viewpoints

Rhett Angelo Belonio | Junjie Herbolingo | Jerlyn Balones

Discipline: Education

 

Abstract:

Changes in the lives of the people are evident along with linguistic creativity and innovation as the world battles with the risk and threats posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Neologisms arise associated with the fields of medicine and epidemiology, word formations, and other significant terminologies that have been around for years and are now contextualized and have been repurposed for public health communication in keeping the public safe and informed. Hence, the success of the communication depends to the level of health literacy of the people and as to how public health communication is crafted tailored fit to their background, needs, and understanding. This study aimed at knowing whether effective communication was guaranteed by the authorities to the multigenerational community using the neologisms that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. This also discovered how using pandemic neologisms in public health communication yields viewpoints among the different generations. In this study, after creating an inventory of words, it was revealed that the morphological processes, such as abbreviation (acronym and initialism), affixation, borrowing, coinage, collocation, and compounding, have contributed to the emergence of these neologisms motivated by the pandemic. Moreover, after a thorough analysis of the narratives of purposively selected (12) respondents from (4) generations such as Baby Boomers, Generations X, Y, and Z, it was found out that there are commonalities and differences in the viewpoints of the participants linked to COVID-19 pandemic neologisms as used in public health communication. Furthermore, a model was developed showing the positive and negative effects of using neologisms in public health communication.