The COVID-19 lexicon

people, stories and memories

Abstract

This study was developed within the scope of the project Covid-19 in Brazil – phase 2 – Analysis and response to social impacts pandemic – immunization, treatment and care and recovery practices of those affected, developed by Rede Covid-19 Humanidades, formed by researchers from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and other institutions. This work aims to present the results of research related to the identification of the lexicon contained in stories narrated by people who suffered the loss of a loved one to Covid-19. Twenty texts posted on the Rede Covid-19 website between August 2021 and January 2022 were analyzed. The motivations for this research were to make known this lexicon in a perspective that reveals the interface between Anthropology and Medicine, in addition to wanting to record the experiences lived during the Covid-19 pandemic, as to identify who the victims were, their families and their feelings, as well as those responsible for so many deaths. The theoretical framework is mainly based on the notions of textual genre, chronicle and lexicons. The methodology for the extraction of lexical units followed the principles of Corpus Linguistics and Terminology. In this process, we used the keywords and concordance tools of Sketch Engine. We were able to identify 235 lexical units, classified into four large categories with subcategories. The categories are: people (refers to victims, their families, health workers, and those responsible for the deaths), feelings (related to the various stages of the disease, from its discovery to death and mourning), health (includes words related to diseases, equipment, symptoms, among others) and stances (includes words referring to the conduct of the pandemic by government bodies). Besides the lexicon, the characteristics of the stories were described in a style similar to that of chronicles, for narrating facts that occurred daily during the Covid-19 pandemic period. Thus, we aim to register the lexicon contained in these stories as a way to remember and honor all the victims and people affected by the pandemic.