Challenges of Creating a Medical Dictionary for a Low Literacy Audience in Brazil– Focusing on Politically Marked Terms Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic

By December 19, 2024,
Page 689-699
Author Ieda Maria Alves, Beatriz Curti-Contessoto, Ana Maria Ribeiro de Jesus
Title Challenges of Creating a Medical Dictionary for a Low Literacy Audience in Brazil– Focusing on Politically Marked Terms Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted numerous sectors at different levels and has imposed a radical change in the pace of life in societies across the globe. A partially technical vocabulary related to COVID-19 quickly became part of everyday life, introduced mainly by news and official bodies. To describe the characteristics of the terminology being disseminated in Brazil, the project Study and dissemination of COVID-19 terminology (2020– 2024) was proposed. More specifically, it has been possible to observe the recurrence of lexical units closely related to political issues – which is the focus of this paper. Entries like gripezinha (small flu), tratamento precoce (early treatment), kit covid (COVID kit) and ministério paralelo or gabinete paralelo (parallel ministry or parallel office) will be explored in this paper. These examples show cases of politically marked terms related to the COVID-19 Brazilian pandemic context. In Brazil, the pandemic has been marked by science denialism, especially on the part of the federal government. Due to this political influence, particularly concerning interference in the Brazilian public health system, these terms, which are not officially recognized by the Brazilian and international medical community, were included in the proposed dictionary, supplemented with contextual information elucidating the political dimensions entailed.
Session Talk
Keywords COVID-19; science denialism; political interference
BibTex 
@inproceedings{euralex_2024_paper_56,
address = {Cavtat},
title = {Challenges of Creating a Medical Dictionary for a Low Literacy Audience in Brazil– Focusing on Politically Marked Terms Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic},isbn = {978-953-7967-77-2},
shorttitle = {Euralex 2024},
url = {},
language = {eng},
booktitle = {Lexicography and Semantics. Proceedings of the XXI EURALEX International Congress},
publisher = {Institut za hrvatski jezik},
author = {Alves, Ieda Maria and Curti-Contessoto, Beatriz and Ribeiro de Jesus, Ana Maria},
editor = {Despot, Kristina Š. and Ostroški Anić, Ana and Brač, Ivana},
year = {2024},
pages = {689-699}
}
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