Submitted:
07 December 2025
Posted:
09 December 2025
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Preprints on COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2
Abstract
This article identifies a terminological misrepresentation in the expression “small gatherings cancellation”—ranked by Haug et al. as the most effective non-pharmaceutical intervention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Corpus-based and theoretical analyses demonstrate that small gathering conventionally denotes a planned or spontaneous social event, while the predicate cancellation reinforces this event-based frame. Consequently, the phrase fails to capture the intended reference to restrictions on simultaneous presence in commercial or professional settings. Drawing on cognitive-linguistic theory and institutional usage from the WHO and CDC, this paper shows how such misrepresentation may trigger unintended conceptual frames, leading to interpretive ambiguity in both scholarly and policy contexts. Three alternatives are proposed to achieve better semantic alignment and enhance terminological precision and communicative clarity in future public-health discourse.
Keywords:
small gatherings cancellation
; cognitive linguistics
; corpus analysis
; semantic frame
In a 2020 article in Nature Human Behaviour, Haug et al. systematically evaluated 46 non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.[1] Among these, small gatherings cancellation was ranked as the most effective measure. However, this highly impactful category suffers from a cognitive-linguistic inconsistency in its terminology. In the discussion section, the authors elaborate on this category, listing examples such as “closure of shops,” “closure of restaurants,” “mandatory home-working,” and “gatherings of 50 people or less.” The terminology chosen for this category may inadvertently cause conceptual confusion and misinterpretation. Although Haug et al.'s primary objective was to establish standardized functional categories for the quantitative evaluation of diverse policy strategies, this prioritization of analytical utility resulted in a linguistically imprecise category label, creating potential risks for policy translation.
The noun gathering—and particularly the collocation small gathering—conventionally denotes a spontaneous or planned event, and the predicate cancel typically applies to planned events, orders, reservations, or subscriptions. Corpus evidence consistently supports this social-event construal. Consequently, this phrasing does not adequately capture the authors’ intended referents—namely, the simultaneous presence of people (crowds) in commercial or professional settings such as shops or offices. The term is therefore problematic in both components: not only is small gatherings a misnomer, but the predicate is also a non-fit, since cancellation prototypically signifies the revocation of a planned or scheduled event, making it conceptually incongruent with policy measures that impose the closure of operating venues (such as shops and restaurants) or restrict in-person work in offices. Ironically, these two components cohere linguistically but fail communicatively: together they activate the prototypical social-event frame rather than the intended occupational domain. As corpus data show, this social-event pattern also recurs in documents issued by the WHO and CDC. Therefore, when language users encounter the phrase small gatherings cancellation without a context, they are likely to activate a cognitive frame associated with festive or social events rather than crowded workplaces or retail spaces. This potential misunderstanding can be explained in terms of cognitive linguistic principles, and the authors are urged to reconsider this terminology for greater clarity and terminological precision.
Corpus Evidence
Small gatherings cancellation, at least in “standard” varieties of English, is not an effective linguistic trigger for evoking the intended conceptual domain (e.g., shop closures or mandatory remote work) in the minds of language users. While this view may align with the intuitions of native and non-native speakers of English, the claim is grounded in empirical corpus data and theoretical principles—not solely in linguistic intuition.
In the British National Corpus (BNC; 100 million words), all five occurrences of small gathering denote spontaneous or planned events.[2] Similarly, in the TV Corpus (325 million words), all 33 instances evoke the same domain, with the four most frequent content-word collocates being having, host, friend, get-together, and party.[3] To examine whether the usage of ‘small gatherings’ had shifted to denote the simultaneous presence of people in commercial or public settings in the six months preceding publication—possibly explaining the authors’ choice—a WebCorp search (3 December 2020) was conducted for occurrences over that period.[4] Among the 93 results, none referred to simultaneous occupancy in commercial or professional settings. The five most frequent content-word collocates included birthday (ranked first), hosting, event, friend, and attend—all reinforcing the “planned or spontaneous event” construal.
Analysis of the Coronavirus Corpus (over 757 million words) yielded parallel findings: friend was the most frequent content-word collocate of small gathering, followed by family.[5] This not only supports the claim that the phrase conventionally refers to social events but also suggests that its prototype is a family or friend get-together. Furthermore, the modifier small conventionally emphasizes the intimate, personal nature of the event, reinforcing the social frame rather than implying a numerical occupancy restriction in a public space. These consistent corpus data demonstrate that the phrase is an ineffective linguistic tool for communicating restrictions on commercial or professional settings.
Institutional Usage
A top-down analysis of reference material further substantiates this interpretation. On the WHO website, instances of small gatherings exclusively refer to planned or spontaneous events. In the Q&A section, “non-professional small gatherings and events” are exemplified as “birthday parties,” “children’s football games,” and “family occasions.” In both sample questions, small gathering appears as the object of organize and attend, both predicates associated with social events.[6]
Similarly, the CDC has issued two key documents addressing gatherings (the superordinate category encompassing small gatherings). Both define a gathering as “a planned or spontaneous event, indoors or outdoors, with a small number of people participating, or a large number of people in attendance.”[7,8] The official definition of the superordinate category ("gatherings") is therefore explicitly event-focused, consistently reinforcing the linguistic distortion of the term when it is used to classify commercial and workplace restrictions. Critically, neither institutional nor general English usage employs small gathering to denote the kind of public or commercial crowd that Haug et al. had in mind.
Cognitive-Linguistic Analysis
The conventional denotation of small gathering thus diverges from the authors’ intended referent. A crucial factor in interpreting linguistic symbols is what Croft and Cruse call purport, defined as the cognitive residue of prior experiences with the term in specific contexts.[9] Although purport differs from meaning itself, it imposes constraints that grant certain construals a default status. The analysis demonstrates that “planned or spontaneous event” occupies this default status for small gathering, making alternative construals—such as crowds in commercial spaces—cognitively more demanding.
Crucially, the use of the predicate cancellation further reinforces the unintended social-event frame. Cancellation prototypically implies a prior plan (e.g., a reservation or a planned gathering), thereby confirming the social-event frame rather than indicating an imposed closure or mandate. This reinforces the interpretive constraint already imposed by the nominal small gathering on the interpreter’s construal.
One might argue that co-text or linguistic context (e.g., the examples provided in the original article) can override the constraints imposed by purport. While contextual information indeed influences construal, not all constraints carry the same weight. Conventional constraints—those grounded in the semantic potential of lexical items—are particularly robust and resistant to reinterpretation through novel contextualization [9], and overriding them requires considerable cognitive effort, as the interpreter must construct a novel construal that is inconsistent with entrenched encyclopedic knowledge.
Moreover, in real communicative situations where the phrase appears outside its full academic context (e.g., in media reports or casual conversations), readers rely on stored knowledge—a constraint in its own right.[9] In such cases, the default interpretation of small gathering as a social event will tend to prevail and may lead to misunderstanding.Meaning, as Fillmore argued, is both dynamic and constrained: each linguistic expression evokes a semantic frame shaped by prior usage.[10] Frames can be modified through recontextualization, but such shifts do not immediately propagate through the linguistic community; early reinterpretations demand additional processing effort and are often haunted by older associations until the new meaning gains conventional status.
Terminological Recommendations
To reduce processing effort and improve conceptual precision, the term small gatherings cancellation is best replaced by a phrase that more effectively evokes the authors' intended referent: mandatory restrictions on simultaneous human presence across public, commercial, and professional venues.
The following alternatives achieve that goal more effectively by focusing on venue restrictions and mandatory action, thereby establishing a default frame aligned with the authors' examples (closures of shops, restaurants, mandatory home-working, and limited gatherings):
- -
- Mandated Limits on Venue Occupancy and Operation:
This term anchors the meaning to policy action (Mandated Limits) and physical locations (Venue Occupancy and Operation). Occupancy refers to numerical restrictions, while Operation covers operational limits up to and including closure (shops/restaurants) and mandated remote work.
- -
- Restrictions on Public-Facing and Occupational Activities
This term anchors interpretation in institutional, commercial, and workplace contexts rather than social events. Public-facing covers settings where individuals interact with the general public (e.g., shops, restaurants), while occupational captures workplaces (e.g., offices). Restrictions conveys a mandatory reduction or suspension of in-person activity in this policy context without implying the cancellation of a social event, thereby aligning with the authors’ own examples.
- -
- Limits on Commercial and Professional Presence:
This alternative offers both brevity and clarity. Limits signals the mandatory reduction in capacity or operation, and works as a clear policy descriptor. By specifying the scope as Commercial and Professional, this term anchors the restriction to the intended venues (shops, restaurants, offices). Presence acts as an umbrella concept, encompassing both total closure (zero presence) and numerical occupancy restrictions.
Conclusion
The phrase small gatherings cancellation in Haug et al. (2020) constitutes a terminological misrepresentation. Corpus data, institutional usage, and cognitive-linguistic theory converge to show that the expression evokes a social-event frame incompatible with the authors’ intended meaning—namely, restrictions on simultaneous presence in shops, restaurants, and offices.
While Haug et al.’s objective was to identify the most effective interventions, grouping diverse measures—such as closure of shops and work mandates—under a single social-event label creates a potential communication problem in public-health contexts. This linguistic ambiguity, by foregrounding the social-event frame rather than the intended public or occupational domains, may mislead both the public and policymakers regarding the nature of restrictions on commercial and workplace settings.
Adopting a more conceptually precise term would improve consistency across policy and academic communication and reduce interpretive ambiguity in future public-health messaging. More generally, the analysis illustrates how linguistic form can shape the public interpretation of health information, a point that merits greater attention in applied linguistics research and practice.
References
- Haug, N.; et al. Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions. Nat. Hum. Behav. 2020, 4, 1303–1312. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Davies, M. British National Corpus. 2004. Available online: https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/.
- Davies, M. The TV Corpus. 2019. Available online: https://www.english-corpora.org/tv/.
- WebCorp. Available online: https://www.webcorp.org.uk (accessed on 3 Dec 2020).
- Davies, M. Coronavirus Corpus. 2020. Available online: https://www.english-corpora.org/coronavirus/.
- World Health Organization. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Small public gatherings. 2020. Available online: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/question-and-answer-hub/q-a-detail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-small-public-gatherings.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Considerations for events and gatherings. 2020. Available online: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/large-events/considerations-for-events-gatherings.html.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Events and gatherings: Readiness and planning tool. 2020. Available online: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/community/COVID19-events-gatherings-readiness-and-planning-tool.pdf.
- Croft, W.; Cruse, D. A. Cognitive Linguistics; Cambridge University Press, 2004. [Google Scholar]
- Fillmore, C. J. Frames and the semantics of understanding. Quaderni di Semantica 1985, 6, 222–254. [Google Scholar]
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