Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Oct 24;19(21):13836.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph192113836.

How Has COVID-19 Impacted Our Language Use?

Francesca Pisano  1 , Alessio Manfredini  1 , Daniela Brachi  1 , Luana Landi  1 , Lucia Sorrentino  1 , Marianna Bottone  1 , Chiara Incoccia  2 , Paola Marangolo  1
Affiliations

How Has COVID-19 Impacted Our Language Use?

Francesca Pisano et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to severe consequences for people's mental health. The pandemic has also influenced our language use, shaping our word formation habits. The overuse of new metaphorical meanings has received particular attention from the media. Here, we wanted to investigate whether these metaphors have led to the formation of new semantic associations in memory. A sample of 120 university students was asked to decide whether a target word was or was not related to a prime stimulus. Responses for pandemic pairs in which the target referred to the newly acquired metaphorical meaning of the prime (i.e., "trench"-"hospital") were compared to pre-existing semantically related pairs (i.e., "trench"-"soldier") and neutral pairs (i.e., "trench"-"response"). Results revealed greater accuracy and faster response times for pandemic pairs than for semantic pairs and for semantic pairs compared to neutral ones. These findings suggest that the newly learned pandemic associations have created stronger semantic links in our memory compared to the pre-existing ones. Thus, this work confirms the adaptive nature of human language, and it underlines how the overuse of metaphors evoking dramatic images has been, in part, responsible for many psychological disorders still reported among people nowadays.

Keywords: COVID-19 emergency; metaphors; misinformation; psychological disorders; public health; semantic priming; social communication; social media.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mean percentage of response accuracy for pandemic, semantic, and neutral stimuli (*** p ≤ 0.001, * p ≤ 0.05).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mean percentage of reaction times (RTs) for pandemic, semantic, and neutral stimuli (*** p ≤ 0.001).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Şencan İ., Kuzı S. Global Threat of COVID 19 and Evacuation of the Citizens of Different Countries. Turk. J. Med. Sci. 2020;50:534–543. doi: 10.3906/sag-2004-21. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Peng M. Outbreak of COVID-19: An Emerging Global Pandemic Threat. Biomed. Pharmacother. 2020;129:110499. doi: 10.1016/j.biopha.2020.110499. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Brooks S.K., Webster R.K., Smith L.E., Woodland L., Wessely S., Greenberg N., Rubin G.J. The Psychological Impact of Quarantine and How to Reduce It: Rapid Review of the Evidence. Lancet. 2020;395:912–920. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30460-8. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kang L., Li Y., Hu S., Chen M., Yang C., Yang B.X., Wang Y., Hu J., Lai J., Ma X., et al. The Mental Health of Medical Workers in Wuhan, China Dealing with the 2019 Novel Coronavirus. Lancet Psychiatry. 2020;7:e14. doi: 10.1016/S2215-0366(20)30047-X. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Li S., Wang Y., Xue J., Zhao N., Zhu T. The Impact of Covid-19 Epidemic Declaration on Psychological Consequences: A Study on Active Weibo Users. Int. J. Env. Res. Public Health. 2020;17:2032. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17062032. - DOI - PMC - PubMed