Tracking the language of COVID-19 for communication: at a glance… / Profesor Madya Dr. Norwati Hj Roslim ... [et al.]

Word of the Year 2020:
Collins Dictionary has declared lockdown as the word of the year due to its sharp rise in usage during the COVID-19 pandemic (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/). Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2020 is pandemic due to its extremely high numbers of looked up in online dictionary (https://www.merriam- webster.com/). The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), however, has been unable to name its traditional Word of the Year for 2020, instead exploring how far and how quickly the language of COVID- 19 has developed in its report titled, "Words of an Unprecedented Year" (https://edition.cnn.com/).

Corpus Analysis of the Language of COVID-19:
The Coronavirus Corpus (Mark Davis, 2020) highlights what people are actually saying in online newspapers and magazines in 20 different English- speaking countries. This includes words and phrases such as social distancing, flatten the curve and pandemic (https://www.english-corpora.org/). A comparison between regions shows, although the word front liner is used worldwide, it is particularly frequent in South East Asia, especially the Philippines and Malaysia. Self-quarantine is more common in the US than in Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, where self-isolate and self- isolation are preferred. Words occurring near frontline are “frontline nurse/ medic/caregiver”, “frontline healthcare/health-care workers”, “frontline warrior/hero”, “courageous/heroic frontline workers” and “essential frontline worker” (https://public.oed.com/).