Neologisms in the Pandemic Era: A Morphological Study

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated linguistic innovation, generating numerous neologisms that captured society’s response to unprecedented global conditions. This paper aimed to analyze the word formation processes found in commonly used neologisms during the COVID-19 Pandemic. In this study, we applied descriptive qualitative design and conducted face-to-face and virtual interview to participants to obtain the data needed in this study. Based from the results, there were sixteen neologisms analyzed through word counting and categorization, namely: facemask, vaccination, social distancing, home quarantine, pandemic, self-isolation, swab test, online class, new normal, virtual party, lockdown, Work from Home, Personal Protective Equipment, Enhanced Community Quarantine, and Coronavirus Disease-19. The neologisms were classified into the appropriate word-formation process and five word-formation processes were found out and these were compounding, borrowing, acronym and initialism, derivation, and multiple processes. Thematic analysis was used to generate common insights on incorporating neologisms and morphological structure in enhancing the teaching-learning process in a language class. Further, in enhancing the teaching-learning process in a language class, two common insights were found, and these were to improve students’ vocabularies and acquaint students with word formations.