Language change and collocations : A study of collocation patterns and semantic prosody during the Covid-19 pandemic

Sammanfattning: This essay is a corpus-based and quantitative study on language change that has occurred during global events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Global events especially affect the English language since it is a global language. In this essay, language change, collocation patterns and semantic prosody are discussed to compare the use of language and investigate whether any changes have occurred during the pandemic. These factors are studied since changes in collocation patterns can give words new meaning and possibly also a new semantic prosody. The collocations that are two or more words that often go together and the frequency of 10 sets of words are studied in particular, since they are often used during the Covid-19 pandemic. The British national corpus (BNC) and the Coronavirus Corpus (CVC) are used in the study to retrieve information on collocational patterns. By using the two corpora, it is possible to investigate the collocations during the pandemic by using CVC, and BNC for a comparison to the collocational use before the pandemic. This is done by using the collocate function in the corpora and investigating the collocates of two words on either side of the node. The major findings from the research reported in this essay show that many of the words have received additional meaning during the pandemic through their collocations, and they are most commonly neutral in semantic prosody.