MEDICAL TERMS AS MEANS OF CONCEPT COVID-19 ACTUALIZATION IN ENGLISH EPIDEMIOLOGICAL DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article deals with lingual peculiarities of medical terms and other language units nominating COVID-19 phenomena in English texts of epidemiological discourse. The novelty of the research lays in the fact, that at the contemporary stage of cognitive studies we are witnessing a new explanatory turn, deeper and more detailed, to the investigation of lingual representation of different concepts, and the COVID-19 as well. The goal of the article is to reveal lingual specifics of medical terms as means of concept COVID-19 actualization in English epidemiological discourse. To fulfill this goal it is necessary to perform the following tasks: to describe the structure of concept COVID-19 from the core-periphery perspective; to explore the main topics of English texts of epidemiological discourse; to define the lingual nature of medical terms nominating COVID-19 in English epidemiological discourse. The object of the research is language means (medical terms) representing concept COVID-19 as a piece of English scientific world image. The subject of the article is lingual peculiarities of language units which take part in verbalization of concept COVID-19. Most of them are represented by medical terms taken from English publicist texts of epidemiological discourse. The illustrated material of the research are the articles from English periodic such as The Guardian, the Economist, from 1.03.2020 to 30.04.2021, which describe different aspects of coronavirus pandemics.

The integrated approach to understanding conceptual structure is grounded on the interrelation of its integrated parts, some of which are understood as main, and the other as additional. In the core part there is the nomination of the virus and the deseace (COVID-19), and in the periphery – numerous medical terms, lexical units, which nominate different phenomena connected with the pandemia. Among the key topics of English texts of epidemiological discourse are the following: the general state of epidemiological situation in different countries, effective measures of overcoming the coronavirus in the sphere of epidemiological approach to modern society, medical peculiarities of testing and vaccination. It has been worked out that medical terms, which actualize the concept COVID-19 nominate some stages of the coronavirus, its new symptoms or side-effects, new social measures and norms. As to their lingual nature they are simple nouns, adjectives, abbreviations or occasionally transformed phraseological units.