6. The RAE and the digital ecosystem

Incidentally, the RAE itself reflects the vitality of the digital ecosystem. In this connection, mention should go to the different posts on its website and the many queries about these and many other words that it answers via Twitter.

First and foremost, this is evidenced by the news item entitled, ‘The most searched for words in the dictionary during quarantine’, posted by the DLE on 7 April 2020, in which it mentions the many visits received in April in relation to concepts such as ‘to confine’ and ‘confined’:

Pandemic, quarantine, to confine, resilience, epidemic, virus, triage and to care for are some of the most searched for words in the Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE) during the previous month, in which they received 84 million visits (nearly 3 million a day). The terms relating to COVID-19 generating the largest number of visits to the DLE indicate a clear information trend: people want to know the meanings accompanying this new reality. But they also imply that there is a yearning for words of encouragement or that offer security. This is the reason why we find, together with confined, morgue and moratorium, words like doctor, innocuous, to refer, solidarity, hope, altruism and to resist. All of them, both those with negative connotations and those with positive ones in these times, topped the list of queries last month.

Secondly, projects like ‘May words be with you’ have been started up. The aim of this social media initiative launched by the RAE, under the hashtag #QueLasLetrasTeAcompañen, is to ‘share words that accompany us in these difficult times and which comfort us in the face of uncertainty’. In sum, the idea is to share comforting and reassuring words on social media in alphabetical order.

All in all, as has been seen, this study shares two basic aspects with the spirit of the RAE: the use of the digital ecosystem—as do the NGLE and the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE)—and the line of argument deployed here which considers that by searching for and using a novel specific terminology in the midst of the public health crisis, citizens have striven to create a security framework with which to shape a more positive life and emotional outlook.

7. Conclusions

The public health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has led to the need for renewed concepts that, even though they are already well established in technical and specialised lexicons, broaden communication standards for the purpose of meeting the challenges that it is posing. The use of unconventional concepts has become widespread precisely thanks to the network society and virtual communication, in which the digitisation of information and the apps of communication-related platforms have played a fundamental role not only as opinion leaders, but also as generators and disseminators of new model type-tokens.

Our study has also described an implementation of the theoretical, linguistic and meaning frame for generating those type-tokens, as well as their semantic and pragmatic by-products, and has assessed the possibilities of their lexicalisation particularly as a result of the convergence of a digitised society with the introduction and management of multiple communication platforms during the public health crisis.