British society reflected in the UK press during the pandemic

Being a living language, the language of the media actively responds to and reflects processes occurring in a society. As the COVID-19 pandemic has been a big crisis for humanity in the 21st century, it is extremely interesting and crucial to identify changes and trends in media language of the time and make parallels to patterns and shifts of social character evolving during the pandemic. The study is based on quantitative and qualitative content analysis of British press within the framework of the COVID-19 pandemic. The period was split into four time spans, the author created and applied to each of the periods four dictionaries with lexical units semantically related to social challenges and processes taking place in the UK during the pandemic. The study shows how social problems of the time such as discrimination against Asians, medical personnel and other key workers as well as restrictions of human rights and freedoms were reflected in media language. The results also reveal that in the early days of the pandemic an increase in anxiety and panic was traced through a large number of negative messages conveyed by press. But during the peak of the first wave in Britain the degree of negativity in the studied media texts drops together with the level of mental health issues of British young adults. Further findings show that it was achieved through intensive militarization of the language which raised the level of resilience of the nation.