Semantic change and socio-semantic variation
The case of Covid-related neologisms on Reddit
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21226697 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Quirin Würschinger (LMU Klinikum, corresponding author), Barbara Mcgillivray (0000-0003-3426-8200, King's College London) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | s3 |
| Pages | 339-352 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-30 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Linguistics Vanguard (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2199-174X • E-ISSN: 2199-174X |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/lingvan-2023-0106 |
| OpenAlex | W4392863745 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
COVID-19 has triggered innovations in science and society globally, leading to the emergence or establishment of formal neologisms such as infodemic and working from home ( WFH ). While previous work on COVID-related lexical innovation has focused on such formal neologisms, this paper uses data from Reddit to study semantic neologisms like lockdown and mask , which have changed in meaning due to the pandemic. First, we identify words that have undergone meaning changes since the start of the pandemic. Our approach, based on word embeddings, successfully detects a variety of COVID-related terms that dominate the resulting list of semantic neologisms. Next, we generate community-specific semantic representations for the communities r/Coronavirus and r/conspiracy , which are both highly engaged in COVID-related discourse. We analyse socio-semantic variation along two dimensions: an evaluative dimension, based on amelioration/pejorization, and the loyalty/betrayal dimension of Moral Foundations Theory. Our findings reveal that the detected semantic neologisms exhibit more negative and betrayal-related associations in r/conspiracy , a subreddit critical of COVID-related sociopolitical measures. Mapping the community-specific representations for the term vaccines on a shared semantic space confirms these differences and reveals more fine-grained denotational and connotational differences between the two communities
Lexical item · Lexical Semantics · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Neologism · Semantic change · Sociology · Authorship Attribution and Profiling · Computer Science · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Mathematics · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Philosophy · Psychology · Artificial Intelligence
Theories of Lexical Semantics
The Dynamics of the Linguistic System
Elusive consensus
The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology
Individual Comparisons by Ranking Methods
A Generalized Solution of the Orthogonal Procrustes Problem
The Pushshift Reddit Dataset
Moral Foundations Theory
Moral Foundations, Ideological Divide, and Public Engagement with U.S. Government Agencies’ Covid-19 Vaccine Communication on Social Media
Political polarization drives online conversations about Covid ‐19 in the United States
English-based coroneologisms
A discourse dynamics exploration of attitudinal responses towards Covid-19 in academia and media
Language and Covid-19
Politicization and Polarization in Covid-19 News Coverage
Measuring Moral Rhetoric in Text
Semantic variation and sociolinguistics
Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |