Abstract: A Storm in Pandemic Times. The Terminological Syntagm ‘Cytokine Storm’ in the Scientific Discourse of Popularisation in Romanian. The object of this contribution is the occurrence of the terminological syntagm cytokine storm (Rom. furtună de citokine) in various excerpts of Romanian scientific discourse of popularisation with reference to the Covid-19 pandemic and/or the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The terminological analysis of the syntagm cytokine storm is limited to a selection of four fragments which have appeared in recent Romanian mass-media discourse. In these fragments, both physicians and journalists specialised in medical science have been asked to explain the cytokine storm anti-inflammatory reaction, which seems to have caused the death of many people during the Covid-19 pandemic. The fragments of popularisation discourse have been selected from interviews broadcast at TV stations or from articles posted on medical websites or in health sections in the online press. As a result of the phenomenon known as the scientific vulgarisation, the corresponding discourse is closely linked to the democratisation of knowledge, in which both mass-media and education play an important part. Moreover, the discourse of popularisation takes into account not only the addresser, but also the addressee of a certain message. In order to make the layman addressee correctly decode the scientific (and terminological) notions, the specialist needs to render the specialised message in a more simplified and easy-to-understand manner. Therefore, the paper aims to highlight the different linguistic means which have been used by various addressers to deliver the necessary explanations for the cytokine storm reaction, so that the non-specialised addressees could understand what the syntagm itself exactly denotes.

Keywords: “cytokine storm” terminological syntagm, scientific discourse of popularisation, medical knowledge, mass-media, linguistic means of scientific vulgarisation