for it or as being a function of medicine) –and we shall find other terms used similarly to these– so ‘being’ is used in various senses, but always with reference to one principle.

2. Digital ecosystem. Transmedia

The digital interaction of communication flows on social media platforms (Web 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0) play a relevant role in completing the lexicalisation process of euphemisms. In particular the Web 2.0 has intensively promoted cooperation in transmitting, recreating, implementing and even distorting novel terminology. According to Wikipedia in Spanish, the ‘social web’, as it is also known,

[…] comprises those websites that facilitate the sharing of information, interoperability, design focusing on the user and collaboration on the World Wide Web. The Web 2.0 allows users to interact with each other and to collaborate together as content creators. The social web, known as the Web 2.0, is more than a mere container or source of information; in this case, the Web becomes a platform of collaborative work. Examples of the Web 2.0 include web communities, web services, web apps, social web services, video hosting services, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies.

Thus, the digital transmedia framework, whose pivotal point is the social web, has triggered an authentic communication revolution by introducing the narrative or digital ecosystem, namely, the ability to transmit information via different systems and networks. On the basis of the generalised use of the Internet, email, blogs, wikis and social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn,

[…] everyone has become their own editor, their own media outlet via their accounts on Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, Tumblr or any blog platform. As a result of this hyper-connectivity, a piece of news, whether it be fake or not, can go viral depending on its content owing to this ecosystem characteristic of the world in which we are currently living (Bandrés, Badillo and Ramos, 2018: 161).

This ecosystem and its by-products have become authentic –albeit not always virtuous– virtual environments, in which information is shared due to the fact that the components of the ‘social web’ have facilitated the fluid and dynamic transmission of information. Of course, to this should be added that connectivity has been reinforced even further by videoconferencing in different formats, specifically, the WhatsApp platform and data communication apps such as Zoom and Skype, among others, which allow for virtual meetings for different purposes, including education, and which have played a relevant role in the new communication paradigm. Moreover, the relentless development of the digital industry is moving towards the progressive widespread deployment and habituation of the Web 4.0, on which priority is given to virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, which advocate for the full implementation of natural language in robotics with the generation of oral messages with a reaction similar to that of humans.

3. Novel conceptualisations during the COVID-19 pandemic

The difference between competence and execution established by Chomsky (1967, 1987), together with the conception of meaning as a language-game, forms the theoretical foundations of the characterisation of language as a living system