The Impact of the Pandemic as an Extralinguistic Factor on Perception and Actualization of Lexical Units in the Individual Language Consciousness

   The coronavirus pandemic was an extralinguistic factor that influenced the lexical meaning of a number of words. In the individual’s mind the word meaning is actualized reflecting the situation “here and now”. The study of the psycholinguistic meaning of the stimulus “shield” by means of a free associative experiment was carried out in two stages, the difference was in the form of the stimulus presentation: the first experiment was carried out with the stimulus word “shield”. The stimulus for the second experiment was a picture illustrating a face shield as personal protective equipment. The great number of the associations obtained in the first experiment were reactions demonstrating one of the lexicographic meanings of the lexeme "shield", namely, a device equipped with measuring and signaling equipment, i.e. in the individual consciousness, the meaning of the distribution panel or electrical panel was actualized. In the second experiment, reactions to a picture depicting protective equipment as a stimulus were mostly related to coronavirus infection. The picture gave the recipients the opportunity to “narrow down” the search for the meaning (semantic actualization in consciousness). The obtained results once again emphasized the fact that psycholinguistic meaning is wider than lexicographic one. The way the recipients perceive the presented stimulus is very important in organizing and conducting a psycholinguistic experiment. Particular attention should be paid to the additional meaning of the considered lexeme that is not recorded in lexicographic sources and appeared under the influence of the coronavirus pandemic as an extralinguistic factor.

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