The linguistic impact of coronavirus on online service offers in Spain as well as France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK

Joachim Grzega

doi:10.21744/lingcure.v5n1.82

Authors

Joachim Grzega
joachim.grzega@ku.de
University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Germany) & VHS Donauwörth (Germany)

Keywords:

contrastive linguistics (Spanish, German, French, Italian, English, Dutch), coronavirus, online service offers, persuasive texts, speech acts

Abstract

Service offers from online platforms in Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK since the COVID-19-related lockdowns in March 2020 are analyzed and related to classical pragmatic nomenclatures. As a result, COVID-19-related lexemes are used particularly in Spain, hardly in the Netherlands, and to a medium degree in Germany, France, Italy, and the UK. Often, such phrases are expressive/phatic, occasionally with an appeal to pity, just to promote positive connotations, not adding anything to the nature of the service. COVID-related lexemes are used, albeit rarely, to say that there is something positive in the crisis. More frequently, these lexemes are employed, in Spain, Germany, and Italy, to explain the motivation for the service offer. In all countries, the lexemes are (semantically superfluously?) used to say that the service offered is free from danger (sometimes being pseudo-assertive). In Spain, covid-lexemes are very typically used to show that the service supplier is free from danger (even in headlines and first sentences), in various kinds of wordings, which mostly do not support the pretended message from a strictly medical point of view: beyond classical terminology, such cases could be termed jargon-related conventional pseudo-implications.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Bremner, S., & Phung, B. (2015). Learning From the Experts: An Analysis of Résumé Writers' Self-Presentation on LinkedIn. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 58(4), 367-380.

Courtois, D. (2020). Et si Didier Raoult avait raison: Les coulisses d’un scandale international. Paris: Investigation Editions.

Flassbeck, H., & Spiecker, F. (2020). Corona, die Politik und die europäische Herausforderung. Makroskop, 27 March 2020. https://makroskop.eu/2020/03/corona-die-politik-und-die-europaeische-herausforderung/ [in English as: Corona, Politics, and the European Challenge. Flassbeck Economics International, 28 March 2020. https://www.flassbeck-economics.com/corona-politics-and-the-european-challenge/]

Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard University Press.

Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Culture and organizations: software of the mind, intercultural cooperation and its importance for survival. McGraw-Hill, New York, 3, 79-107.

Ioannidis, J. (2020). The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data. MedRxiv.

Jakobson, R. (1960). Linguistics and poetics. In Style in language (pp. 350-377). MA: MIT Press.

Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics Cambridge University Press. Cambridge UK.

Löwe, S. (2019). Vom optimierten Selbst erzählen. Überlegungen zum transmedialen Phänomen der Instagram-Influencerin. Diegesis, 8(2).

Manoharan, A., Jones, J., Jiang, Z., & Singal, M. (2021). Career optimism of culturally and linguistically diverse hotel workers in the pandemic age. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 93, 102796. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2020.102796

Ochsner, B. (2014). Image 2.0 oder: SelbstTechnologien in sozio-medialen Netzwerken. In Das öffentliche Ich (pp. 161-178). transcript-Verlag.

Piller, I. (2020). Covid-19 forces us to take linguistic diversity seriously. In A De Gruyter social sciences pamphlet: perspectives on the pandemic: international social science thought leaders reflect on Covid-19 (pp. 12-17). De Gruyter.

Reiss, K., & Bhakdi, S. (2020). Corona, False Alarm?: Facts and Figures. Chelsea Green Publishing.

Ren, Z., Liao, H., & Liu, Y. (2020). Generalized Z-numbers with hesitant fuzzy linguistic information and its application to medicine selection for the patients with mild symptoms of the COVID-19. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 145, 106517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2020.106517

Searle, J. R., & Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language (Vol. 626). Cambridge university press.

Ventola, E. (1979). The structure of casual conversation in English. Journal of pragmatics, 3(3-4), 267-298. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(79)90034-1

Walton, D. (2016). Appeal to pity: Argumentum ad misericordiam. SUNY Press.

Walton, D. N., Reed, C., & Macagno, F. (2008). Argumentation schemes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Warburton, N. (2000). Thinking from A to Z. London: Routledge.