Coronavirus as a linguistic participant in the “pandemic ” situation (based on media texts)

Statement of the problem. The article discusses the problem of the representation of the “pandemic” language situation, which has become a separate topic in the media in recent years. The purpose of the study is to calculate the semantic roles of coronavirus, one of the “participants” of the “pandemic” language situation in the Russian linguistic worldview taking into account textual material, Internet publications of “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, “LIFE”, “RBC”, “Gazeta.ru”, “Roscongress”, and RIA “Novosti”. The focus is on the content side of statements, including typical nominations of the selected element: coronavirus, virus, covid, etc. The methodology (materials and methods). Therefore, the method of semantic, in particular semantic- syntactic, analysis of the utterance and the text as a whole was chosen as the main scientific approach within linguistic boundaries, and scientific research devoted to the study of the “pandemic topic” in various texts and in the language system was chosen as the scientific basis. The research results show, firstly, a diverse role repertoire of the semantic roles of coronavirus (subject, possessor, causator, destructive, counterparty, means, object, object of characterization, etc.), and secondly, the presence of coronavirus as a linguistic participant in several subject areas (social, scientific, and physical), thirdly, the fact of “preference” of one or another role type by a certain sphere. Thus, in linguistic situations related to the social sphere, coronavirus more often chooses the role of an active subject, and in the scientific sphere, it finds itself in a specific position of an object of intellectual actions. Conclusion. In general, the coronavirus is comprehended in the media picture of the world as one of the key elements of the global “pandemic” situation, which manifests itself vividly and diversely in various language scenarios.