Linguistic expressions related to communicating COVID-19 Pandemic in Runyankore-Rukiga

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 as a global pandemic resulted in the creation of expressions in Runyankore-Rukiga, which are employed to communicate COVID-19. While these expressions have been used frequently in all domains of communication among the Banyankore-Bakiga for close to two years now, they have not acquired serious scholarly attention. In this study, COVID-19 related expressions used in Runyankore-Rukiga are identified, and their morpho-semantic structure is described. In addition, the study analysed the expressions with the aim of establishing if the meaning and other nuances they communicate are the same, similar or different from those communicated by their English counterparts. Using qualitative methods, the Runyankore-Rukiga COVID-19 related expressions were identified. The analysis to establish if the Runyankore-RukigaCOVID-19 expressions have the same or similar effect in communicating messages in the source language text was informed by Nida’s (1964) Dynamic Equivalence theory. The findings indicate that some Runyankore-Rukiga COVID-19 expressions have acquired new contextualised meanings. Some were directly borrowed from the English language, some appear as code-switches, and others are descriptive in nature, while others appear as negated forms. With regards to establishing if the Runyankore-Rukiga COVID-19 expressions had the same or similar effect in communicating COVID-19 pandemic messages in Source Language Text, the study found that the expressions conveyed the same or similar effect in rendering messages of COVID-19 idiomatically, although, for some expressions, there were differences in the communicated nuances between Runyankore-Rukiga expressions and their English counterparts. Among other recommendations, the study proposes the need to conduct research on other pandemics and epidemics be conducted to see if they would show the same structural manifestation in Runyankore-Rukiga. Dynamic Equivalence theory was used in this study to establish if the Runyankore-Rukiga COVID-19 expressions have the same or similar effect in communicating COVID-19 pandemic messages as in Source Language Text. It would also be important to conduct a study and test whether other theories, such as Skopos theory and Relevancy theory, can account for the same.