<i>COVID-19</i> WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE CURRENT RESEARCH ON PANDEMIC DISCOURSE
The article discusses the language entry process of a name of a new disease that caused COVID-19 pandemic. The history of the name of the disease and its pathogen is shown, taking into account the recommendations of international organizations. The analysis of the word existence at different levels of the language system was carried out on the material of mass media, which revealed its graphic, phonetic, lexical-syntactic, and semantic variability due to the participant multiplicity in the thematic discourse. The lack of a stable scientific base gives the discourse a character of uncertainty, which creates the possibility of manipulation. There is a high derivational activity of the new lexeme in slang, general and special vocabulary. The conclusion is made about the prospects of studying: the discursive development of the pandemic neologisms; the pandemic discourse interaction; the identification and analysis of new (compared to the considered) discursive topics of the global epidemic; the analysis of professional (medical) discourse in the situation of a new disease pandemic, with particular attention to the cognitive-communication process of developing new language signs in the discourse, features of conceptualization of professionally significant objects, new linguocognitive models and strategies in different professional areas of interaction.