Tertium Linguistic Journal/ Półrocznik Językoznawczy Tertium

Vol 8, No 1 (2023)

When Negative Turns out to Be Positive: Exploring Changes in Word Associations in the Aftermath of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Mai Raet

Abstract

Pandemia Covid-19 wywarła znaczący wpływ na różne aspekty życia społecznego, w tym na język i procesy poznawcze. W badaniu tym zbadano, jak pandemia wpłynęła na skojarzenia związane ze słowami związanymi ze zdrowiem wśród 1454 rodzimych użytkowników języka estońskiego. Dane zebrane między styczniem a marcem 2023 r. porównano ze zbiorem danych sprzed pandemii, słownikiem pt. „Dictionary of Estonian Word Associations” (DEWA), opracowanym w latach 2016–2018. W badaniu skupiono się na piętnastu słowach związanych ze zdrowiem. Wyniki wykazały, że, w związku z kryzysem związanym z Covid-19, pięć z tych słów doznało znaczących zmian w swoich ścieżkach skojarzeń. Warto zauważyć, że spośród badanych 15 słów trzy wyróżniają się jako najbardziej znaczące przypadki, gdzie nastąpiła zmiana w podstawowych reakcjach na nie; te zazwyczaj wykazują najsilniejsze i najtrwalsze powiązania skojarzeniowe, co czyni je mniej podatnymi na zmiany. Ten proces ujawnia zmiany w reprezentacjach leksykonu mentalnego oraz ewoluujące postrzeganie określonych słów i pojęć w kontekście pandemii. Wyniki te ilustrują, jak nieprzewidziane zakłócenia zewnętrzne, takie jak kryzys związany z Covid-19, mogą zmienić konfigurację znaczeń niektórych pojęć w obrębie języka i poznania. Niniejsze badanie przyczynia się do zrozumienia skutków językowych i procesów adaptacji języka wywołanych kryzysem zdrowotnym. Wzbogaca także stosunkowo słabo zbadaną dziedzinę badań nad skojarzeniami słów, szczególnie w językach spoza obszaru anglojęzycznego.

References

Aitchison, Jean (2012) Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon. 4th ed. Chichester: Wiley­Blackwell.

Alshaabi Thayer, Michael V. Arnold, Joshua R. Minot, Jane Lydia Adams, David Rushing Dewhurst, Andrew J. Reagan, Roby Muhamad, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds (2021) “How the World’s Collective Attention is Being Paid to a Pandemic: COVID-19 Related N-Gram Time Series for 24 Languages on Twitter.” PLoS One, 16(1). doi: 10.1371/ journal.pone.0244476.

Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, Edward Finegan (2000) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.

Cinelli, Matteo, Walter Quattrociocchi, Alessandro Galeazzi, Carlo Michele Valensise, Emanuele Brugnoli, Ana Lucia Schmidt, Paola Zola, Fabiana Zollo, Antonio Scala (2020) “The COVID-19 Social Media Infodemic.” Scientific reports, 10(1); 1–10. DOI:10.1038/ s41598-020-73510-5.

Cohen, Jacob (1962) “The Statistical Power of Abnormal-Social Psychological Research: A Review.” Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 65; 145–153.

Cohen, Jacob (1992) “A Power Primer.” Psychological Bulletin, 112; 155–159.

Collins, Allan M., Elizabeth F. Loftus (1975) “A Spreading-Activation Theory of Semantic Processing.” Psychological Review. 82(6); 407–428.

Crystal, Davis (2020) “Cambridge Reflections-COVID-19: Vocabulary.” Cambridgeblog. URL: http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2020/05/covocabulary/. Accessed: 17.05.2023.

Deese, James (1962) “On the Structure of Associative Meaning.” Psychological Review, 69(3); 161–175.

Deese, James (1964) “The Associative Structure of Some Common English Adjectives.” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 3(5); 347–357.

Deese, James (1965) The Structure of Associations in Thought and Language. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Deese, James (1966) The Structure of Associations in Language and Thought. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

De Deyne, Simon, Gert Storms (2008) “Word Associations: Network and Semantic Properties.” Behavior Research Methods, 40(1); 213–231.

De Deyne, Simon, Gert Storms (2015) “Word Associations.” [In:] In John R. Taylor (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Word. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 465–480.

De Deyne, Simon, Daniel J. Navarro, Gert Storms (2012) “Better Explanations of Lexical and Semantic Cognition Using Networks Derived from Continued rather than Single-Word Associations.” Behavior Research Methods, 45; 480–498.

de Groot, Annette M. (1989) “Representational Aspects of Word Imageability and Word Frequency as Assessed through Word Association.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 15(5); 824–845.

Edwards, Philip James, Ian Roberts, Mike J. Clarke, Carolyn DiGuiseppi, Reinhard Wentz, Irene Kwan, Rachel Cooper, Lambert M. Felix, Sarah Pratap (2009) “Methods to Increase Response to Postal and Electronic Questionnaires.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 3; 1–38. doi: 10.1002/14651858.MR000008.pub4.

Elman, Jeffrey L., Elizabeth A. Bates, Mark H. Johnson (1996) Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Estonian Health Board (2023) What is COVID-19? URL: https://www.terviseamet.ee/en/what-covid-19. Accessed: 23.05.2023.

Everett, Daniel L. (2016) Dark Matter of the Mind: The Culturally Articulated Unconscious. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.

Fitzpatrick, Tess, Cristina Izura (2011) “Word Association in L1 and L2: An Exploratory Study of Response Types, Response Times, and Interlingual Mediation.” Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33(3); 373–398.

Fitzpatrick, Tess, Peter Thwaites (2020) “Word Association Research and the L2 Lexicon.” Language Teaching, 53(3); 237–274. doi:10.1017/S0261444820000105.

Forster, Kenneth I. (1976) “Accessing the Mental Lexicon.” [In:] Edward Walker, Roger J. Wales (eds.), New Approaches to Language Mechanisms; Amsterdam; New York: North-Holland Publishing Company; 257–287.

Galton, Francis (1879) “Psychometric Experiments.” Brain, 2(2); 149–162.

Gow, David W. (2012) “The Cortical Organization of Lexical Knowledge: A Dual Lexicon Model of Spoken Language Processing.” Brain and Language, 121(3); 273–288.

Hallin, Anna Eva, Diana Van Lancker-Sidtis (2017) “A Closer Look at Formulaic Language: Prosodic Characteristics of Swedish Proverbs.” Applied Linguistics, 38(1); 68–89. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amu078.

Harley, Trevor A. (2014) The Psychology of Language: From Data to Theory. London; New York: Psychology Press.

Hickok, Gregory, David Poeppel (2007) “The Cortical Organization of Speech Processing.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8(5); 393–402.

Hiiemäe, Reet, Mare Kalda, Mare Koiva, Piret Voolaid (2020) “Koroonakriisi rahvapärased väljendused Eestis Folkloori taaskasutus kui toimetulekuviis.” Keel ja Kirjandus, 12; 1011–1032. DOI:10.54013/kk757a1

Jenkins, James J., David S. Palermo (1965) “Further Data on Changes in Word­Association Norms.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1(4); 303–309. https://doi.org/ 10.1037/h0021914.

Jenkins, James J., Wallace A. Russell (1960) “Systematic Changes in Word Association Norms: 1910–1952.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 60(3); 293–304. https:// doi.org/10.1037/h0042234.

Jung, Carl G. (1910) “The Association Method.” The American Journal of Psychology, 21(2); 219–269.

Kang, Beom-mo (2018) “Collocation and Word Association: Comparing Collocation Measuring Methods.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 23(1); 85–113.

Kleinman, Daniel, Adam M. Morgan, Rachel Ostrand, Eva Wittenberg (2022) “Lasting Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Language Processing.” Plos One, 17(6): e0268121. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269242.

Klosa-Kückelhaus, Annette (2022) “Lexicography for Society and with Society-COVID-19 and Dictionaries.” [In:] Annette Klosa-Kückelhaus, Stefan Engelberg, Christine Möhrs, and Petra Storjohann (eds.), Dictionaries and Society. Proceedings of the XX EURALEX International Congress, 12-16 July 2022, Mannheim, Germany. Mannheim: IDS-Verlag; 113–128.

Lazarus, Richard S. (1991) Emotion and Adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lemhöfer, Kristin, Ton Dijkstra (2004) “Recognizing Cognates and Interlingual Homographs: Effects of Code Similarity in Language-Specific and Generalized Lexical Decision.” Memory & Cognition, 32; 533–550.

Libben, Gary, Gonia Jarema (2002) “Mental Lexicon Research in the New Millennium.” Brain and Language, 81(1-3); 2–11.

LimeSurvey GmbH (2019) LimeSurvey (Version 3.24.0+201013) [Computer software]. Retrieved from https://www.limesurvey.org.

Meara, Paul (2009) Connected Words: Word Associations and Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Milton, James, Tess Fitzpatrick (2017) Dimensions of Vocabulary Knowledge. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Mollin, Sandra (2009) “Combining Corpus Linguistic and Psychological Data on Word Co-Occurrences: Corpus Collocates versus Word Associations”. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 5(2); 175–200. https://doi.org/10.1515/CLLT.2009.008.

Nelson, Douglas L., Cathy L. McEvoy, Simon Dennis (2000) “What is free association and what does it measure?” Memory & Cognition. 28(6); 887–899.

Nelson, Douglas L., Cathy L. McEvoy, Thomas A. Schreiber (2004) “The University of South Florida Free Association, Rhyme, and Word Fragment Norms.” Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36(3); 402–407.

Nissen, Henriette Bagger, Birgit Henriksen (2006) “Word Class Influence on Word Association Test Results 1.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 16 (3); 389–408.

Oldfield, Richard Charles (1966) “Things, Words and the Brain.” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(4); 340–353.

Planchuelo, Clara, Ana Baciero, José Antonio Hinojosa, Manuel Perea, and Jon Andoni Dunabeitia (2022) “Social Context Effects on Emotional Language: The Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Emotional Evaluation of Words.” Acta Psychologica 229: 103686.

Quillian, M. Ross (1968) “Semantic Memory.” [In:] Marvin Minsky (ed.), Semantic Information Processing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 216–270.

Rapp, Brenda, Simon Fischer-Baum, Michele Miozzo (2015) “Modality and Morphology: What We Write May Not Be What We Say.” Psychological Science, 26(6); 892–902.

Rogers, Timothy, James L. McClelland (2004) Semantic Cognition: A Parallel Distributed Processing Approach. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Salazar, Danica, Kate Wild (2022) “The Oxford English Dictionary and the Language of Covid-19.” [In:] Annette Klosa-Kückelhaus, Ilan Kernerman (eds.), Lexicography of Coronavirus-Related Neologisms. Berlin; Boston: de Gruyter, 11–26. https://doi.org/10.1515/97831107 98081-002.

Schmid, Monika S., Barbara Köpke (2009) “L1 Attrition and the Mental Lexicon.” Anetta Pavlenko (ed.), Lexicon: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Bristol, UK–Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters; 209–238. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847691262.

Schmitt, Norbert (1998) “Quantifying Word Association Responses: What is Native-Like?” System, 26(3); 389–401.

Speer, Robyn, Joshua Chin, Catherine Havasi (2017) “ConceptNet 5.5: An Open Multilingual Graph of General Knowledge.” Proceedings of AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 31. Palo Alto; 4444–4451. http://aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AAAI/AAAI17/paper/view/14972

Steyvers, Mark, Joshua B. Tenenbaum (2005) “The Large‐Scale Structure of Semantic Networks: Statistical Analyses and A Model of Semantic Growth.” Cognitive Science. 29(1); 41–78.

Thorne, Tony (2020) “Spotlight on COVID: Pandemic Language and the Role of Linguists.” [In:] Annette Klosa-Kückelhaus, Ilan Kernerman (eds.), Lexicography of Coronavirus-Related Neologisms. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 11–26. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783 110798081.

Toim, Kalju (1980) “Estonian Word Association Norms for the Kent-Rosanoff Test.” Problems of Cognitive Psychology. Tartu Riikliku Ülikooli Toimetised 522. Tartu; 60–76.

Trap-Jensen, Lars, Henrik Lorentzen (2022) “Recent Neologisms Provoked by COVID-19–in the Danish Language and in the Danish dictionary”. [In:] Annette Klosa-Kückelhaus, Stefan Engelberg, Christine Möhrs, and Petra Storjohann (eds.), Dictionaries and Society. Proceedings of the XX EURALEX International Congress, 12-16 July 2022, Mannheim, Germany. Mannheim: IDS-Verlag; 825–832.

Vainik, Ene (2018) “Compiling the Dictionary of Word Associations in Estonian: From Scratch to the Database.” Estonian Papers in Applied Linguistics. 14; 229–245. https://doi.org/ 10.5128/ERYa14.14.

Vainik, Ene (2019a) Eesti keele assotsiatsioonisõnastik. https://doi.org/10.15155/3-00-0000-0000-0000-07DF6L. Accessed: 17.05. 2023.

Vainik, Ene (2019b) Eesti keele sõna-assotsiatsioonide andmebaas. https://doi.org/10.15155/ 30000000000000007DF4L. Accessed: 17.05.2023.

Vainik, Ene (2021) “Muutuv meel. Aastatel 1973–1974 ja 2016–2018 kogutud sõna-assotsiatsioonide võrdlus.” Keel ja Kirjandus, 64(12); 1058–1077.

van Hell, Janet G., Ton Dijkstra (2002) “Foreign Language Knowledge Can Influence Native Language Performance in Exclusively Native Contexts.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9(4); 780–789. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196335.

World Health Organization (2023) “Advice for the Public: Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19).” WHO. URL: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public. Accessed:13.04.2023.

Wolter, Brent (2001) “Comparing the L1 and L2 Mental Lexicon: A Depth of Individual Word Knowledge Model.” Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 23 (1); 41-69.

Yang, Aimei, Charles Self (2015) “Anti-Muslim Prejudice in the Virtual Space: A Case Study of Blog Network Structure and Message Features of the ‘Ground Zero Mosque Controversy.” Media, War & Conflict, 8(1); 46–69. https://doi.org/10.1177/17506352145 41030.