The unprecedented situation of COVID-19 has resulted in widespread social transformation. In the Japanese language space, one can examine various modifications, such as the creation of new expressions centered on the media or social networking sites or the reinterpretation of existing vocabulary.
This study aims to determine what specific expressions are used in this context for “corona senryu” and what connotations people associate with those expressions.
In this study, the most frequent vocabularies were extracted by first analyzing 430 collected works to achieve the stated objective.
Next, the image of each word was considered by observing the contents of the works, focusing on the works in which frequent words are used.
First, expressions that have been widely recognized and utilized in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, including “COVID-19” and “COVID-19 pandemic”, as well as “san-mitsu” and “goto” were confirmed. Second, terminology closely associated with diseases and hygiene, such as “mask”, “virus”, “vaccine”, etc. were confirmed. Third, words that have long existed and have been routinely used, such as “grandchild”, “voice”, and “dream” were confirmed. Fourth, it was possible to confirm the vocabulary that has existed and been used in a specific scene, even though it is not at the level of everyday usage, focusing on information technology (IT) terms such as “remote” and “telework”.
Regarding the image of the vocabulary, for instance in the case of “COVID-19”, both its aspect as a catastrophe and a case of being used as a positive image or personifying the coronavirus were confirmed.
Additionally, we managed to confirm various cases that were difficult to grasp only with dictionary definitions such as “mask”, which previously carried a strong negative image such as “ill” or “suspicious person”, used as a positive image with positive words such as “beautiful” and “rejuvenated”.