Developing an Up-to-date Academic Word List for Public Health Emergencies of International Concern: The Case of Mpox

The mpox epidemic in many countries has made it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern for two times so far. Learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, the international community has made response plans and proposed measures to contain the epidemic. From the perspective of emergency language service, this paper aims to develop an academic word list on mpox to assist prevention and facilitate communication. The powerful corpus tool Sketch Engine and its rich corpus resources are exploited to make the Mpox Word List, which includes about 300 words. The four-step purpose-oriented procedure for academic word list development is synthesized based on previous literature and the practice of developing this mpox word list. Further research directions in extracting multi-word terms or n-grams and developing supplementary acronym list can be included to facilitate academic exchange and mass communication. This paper is believed to be of significant reference value for further term extraction practice and word list development in public emergencies, crises, and other scenarios.