Tag: pandemic

This is Your Language on Stress

by Conner

One of the small surprises I’ve encountered this semester is the struggles I’ve had in find things to write about for this blog–and for every other assignment, too. My writing has felt stilted and strange, and everything takes significantly longer than it did in the past. I mean…am I just getting old? Or is something else going on?

It could be because I’m under a lot of long-term stress because of the pandemic. Studies have shown that the more stressed you are, the less complex your thoughts—it’s called the disruptive stress hypothesis (Suedfeld & Rank, 1976). 

So when even thinking about things is harder than it used to be, you can imagine the impact this will have on our personal interactions, including our ability to express ourselves clearly to others in speech and writing. Researchers have found that the ability to deliver a coherent narrative demands good executive functioning, and executive function is taxed under stress (Arnsten, 2009).

I’d be sweaty too if I tried to run Zoom on that old computer in the background
Image by andreas160578 from Pixabay

A 2014 study found the more stress you’re experiencing, the less complex thoughts you’ll be able to form and express to others (Saslow, et. al.).

Okay, this is all fine, but it’s mostly about the brain. Why did I want to put it in a sociolinguistics blog? Let’s say that, as the above study also noted, long-term exposure to stress can also lead to long-term changes in your brain, “which concurrently leads to both lower complexity and…exaggerated reactivity under pressure.” Stress makes you have problems thinking complex thoughts, which means you have problems expressing and understanding these thoughts in speech and writing when you try to deal with other people.

Oh, also, the tools we use to communicate have changed. It seems like changes in society + changes in our brains + changes in the ways we communicate with each other could result in some pretty fundamental language change.

At least you’re kind of close to someone when you use one of these old school jams
Image by Michael Schwarzenberger from Pixabay

Researchers at the University of Michigan have already began to study language change over the course of the pandemic. They note that previous crises like World War II caused language change because it brought people together in novel ways, but the current pandemic has been keeping people apart (Popiolek, 2020).

As society changes and our brains change concurrently, so will the way we speak to each other. So if you’re struggling, take consolation! You might just be stressed. Or getting old. Possibly a combination of the two.

Have you noticed a difference in the way you express your ideas to others since the pandemic has started? Beyond simple vocabulary changes, do you think we will see long-term linguistic effects from the pandemic in the future?

Resources

Arnsten A. F. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nat Rev Neurosci, 10(6), 410-22.

Popiolek, K. (2020). Researchers study how COVID pandemic is affecting language change. MSU Today. https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2020/researchers-study-how-covid-pandemic-is-affecting-language-change/

Saslow, L. R., McCoy, S., van der Löwe, I., Cosley, B., Vartan, A., Oveis, C., Keltner, D., Moskowitz, J. T., & Epel, E. S. (2014). Speaking under pressure: low linguistic complexity is linked to high physiological and emotional stress reactivity. Psychophysiology, 51(3), 257–266. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12171

Suedfeld P. & Rank A. D. (1976) Revolutionary leaders: Long-term success as a function of changes in conceptual complexity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34(2), 169.

Pandemic Language Shift

By Hannah Southwood

Van Herk (2018) explores how language changes based on place, social status and time. These three topics are entering a new phase experienced at more or less the same time due to the coronavirus pandemic. Two examples given by Van Herk (2018) explore the physical isolation of both Newfoundland English and Québec French. In both cases the languages were ‘cut off’ from the rest of the developing groups, both keeping some of the old language features.

We see the opposite happening on a global scale as business meetings and classes are taken online. Regardless of place, social status or time, similar words and phrases are becoming a part of our everyday vocabulary and understood across the globe. Some of these terms and phrases existed well before the pandemic, but because of their use are now common terms we associate with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here is a list of English medical terms and phrases that are commonplace now:

  • Physical & Social Distancing
  • Flatten the Curve
  • Epidemic & Pandemic
  • Respirator & Ventilator
  • Isolation & Quarantine
  • Asymptomatic
  • Contact tracing
  • Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Here is a list of new terms and phrases in English:

  • Zoom Fatigue
  • Let’s Zoom
  • Covid bubble
  • Learning Pod or Class Bubble
  • Elbow bump
  • Blursday
  • Covidiot
  • New normal

Here are a few examples in other languages and their explanations:

  • Geisterspiel (German) for no fans in the stadium
  • Coronaspeck (German) for getting fat during covid
  • Quatorzaine (French) for 14-days of isolation

As you can see, unlike languages being cut off from others, here in our digital age with social media as a driving force, old words and phrases become ‘new’, important and forever associated with COVID-19. Newer words and phrases to deal with and explain the new normal will forever be in our vocabularies, pulling them out when needed and knowing others understand. I personally will continue using the word “blursday” because sometimes days blur together even without a pandemic.

Are there any new words or phrases I missed? Please leave them in the comments below.

References

Do you speak corona? A guide to covid-19 slang. (n.d.). The Economist. Retrieved November 6, 2020, from https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/04/08/do-you-speak-corona-a-guide-to-covid-19-slang

Jackson, P. (2020, April 14). Language of a pandemic: A glossary of commonly used words and phrases related to COVID-19. Thetelegram.com. https://www.thetelegram.com/news/local/language-of-a-pandemic-an-glossary-of-commonly-used-words-and-phrases-related-to-covid-19-437420/

Lawson, R. (n.d.). Coronavirus has led to an explosion of new words and phrases – and that helps us cope. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-has-led-to-an-explosion-of-new-words-and-phrases-and-that-helps-us-cope-136909

‌New words list April 2020. (n.d.). Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved November 6, 2020, from https://public.oed.com/updates/new-words-list-april-2020/

The Coronavirus Slang Words That Are Defining This Outbreak. (n.d.). Dictionary.com. Retrieved November 6, 2020, from https://www.dictionary.com/e/s/new-words-we-created-because-of-coronavirus/#1

Van Herk, G. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? (Second, Ser. Linguistics in the world). John Wiley & Sons.

Joining (?) a new social network (?)

By Conner

This is my first semester of graduate school. I was very much looking forward to joining a new social network. Generally, I find that most people would think of social media Facebook when presented with the words “social network”—encouraged, of course, by the fact that there’s a movie about Facebook with that exact same name.

Instead, what I’m talking about, in sociolinguistic terms, is the interconnected web of people with whom I interact on a regular basis. I don’t know about anyone who is reading this, but I’ve noticed my social network has assumed a strange new shape recently, one with a lot of little squares. I grew up in the 80’s and remember watching the TV show Max Headroom, about a person who gets digitized into a computer and can only communicate, stuttering and digitized, through a screen.

This show also scared the bejeesus out of me

The only human I see physically on a regular basis is my husband. Everyone else–students, classmates, friends–is like Max Headroom: recorded, converted into 1’s and 0’s, and then reconstituted. Only then is it safe for me to see them.

I anticipated that my social network would grow when I began to attend graduate school. I thought it would be fun to get back into talking to smart people about smart things and feeling very smart and smug, but instead, I feel very distanced from my classmates. There is no ambient chatting before or after classes, and no group study or trips to get afternoon coffee the way I imagined my graduate school experience might be.

I am at least lucky to have been grouped up with individuals for my group projects who were interested in meeting up early to plan. Everyone confessed in our first meetings that we felt very confused and insecure. Nobody seems to be feeling very smart or smug, and even the teachers seem to feel hesitant in this new online environment.

McGill has just announced that it will be following a similar online format for the Winter semester. I am a thesis student and will probably be done with my coursework after two semesters. I worry that my social network will not be able to truly grow because I am distanced from my classmates. Everyone seems very interesting, and is full of their own experiences and expertise, but we seem unable to connect. I’ve certainly made friends and connected with people online before, but this feels impossible currently. I worry that we will not be able to all improve together. Selfishly, I even worry if this will impact my writing and thinking, and if the quality of the research I will attempt to produce will suffer accordingly.

I hope I will be able to meet at least some of my classmates in-person in the future. Perhaps the groundwork we lay now, the shared experience of online learning and pandemic, will grow into a different sort of social network. I look forward to having a smug cup of coffee together and being surprised at how tall everyone actually is in real life.

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