COVID-19 Myth Busters in World Languages: A case for broader impacts of linguistic research during the COVID-19 crisis
Seunghun Lee, Daehan Won, Shigeto Kawahara
November 2020 

As soon as it became clear that the COVID-19 pandemic was a global situation, one question that sprung up among the linguistic community is whether there is any way in which we can use our research expertise to address problems related to the pandemic. In answer to this question, this paper reports on our ongoing multi-lingual initiative, “COVID-19 Myth Busters in World Languages,” in which we translate the list of myth busters related to COVID-19 issued by WHO into as many languages as possible, including a number of minority languages. As of November 2020, our list includes up to 109 languages. This initiative has the potential to lessen the further spread of the current COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to function as a preventive measure for a future pandemic by sharing basic information about public health. From the most general perspective, we situate the current project as a case in which we can make use of our expertise for the welfare of society, having broad impacts that go beyond the linguistics community.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/005251 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	To appear in REPORTS of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 52, (2021)]
keywords:	broader impacts, covid-19, public health, minority languages, collaborative initiative, semantics, syntax, phonology
previous versions:	v1 [June 2020]
Downloaded:	739 times

 

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