Pandemia e neologia em manchetes jornalísticas: criatividade lexical em foco

Abstract

This paper, motivated by the relations between language and culture, especially the relations between lexicon and social facts, aims to show some aspects of lexical innovation in contemporary Portuguese in Brazil, from neological creations in the field of electronic media (internet sites), collected from journalistic headlines, generated by the strong influence of extralinguistic facts arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. In this context, several processes of lexical renewal were observed, with the inclusion of new units, involving formal, semantic, and loanword neology. As methodological procedures, based on the lexicographic criterion for identification of the neological lexical unit, reports from the national circulation press were examined, from which headlines containing thirtynine neologisms were selected. With this, the work reveals the abundance of new words generated in Brazilian Portuguese, in the period of occurrence of the Covid-19 pandemic.