Курсовая работа: The neologisms and their word building means in Modern English
Now we present the table, where words are arranged according the popularity first of all, the earliest citation, the short definition, the word-building type, the sphere of usage are presented.
We had 50 most frequently used neologisms to investigate at our disposal, it is clear that it is only a small portion of new coined words we could use, but for the convenience and the accuracy of the analysis only these words were taken. Nevertheless, even these words can prompt us about the contemporary processes in the language, and we can distinguish the most productive ways of new words to appear and the main spheres where they are needed. We can determine the major trends in the neology as well.
Culture – General-11, Food and Drink -2, Television-2, Health and Fitness-3.
Sociology – General-22, Gay and Lesbian-3, Pregnancy and Parenting -5, Men and Women-9,
Computers – General-5, Internet – 6, Hacking and Hackers-3, Wareless-3, E-mail-3
Technology – General-3, Cell Phones-4
The World – Crime-3, General -1, Politics -3,
Science – General-4, Biology-2, Psychology-4
Business – General-2, Money -1
Language – General-4
Word building means is the first thing we will do research into analyzing the chart of the most popular neologisms. According to it we can mark that the word composition and sense development are the most productive ways of coining new words. According to structural types of words, two motivating bases are employed while forming words by word composition. For instance, the word neurotheology has two clear bases, they are neuro – and – theology. Judging by the result it’s the most common way as is ‘the easiest’, as soon as you use the already existing words and put them together.
Sense development is employed when a new meaning is acquired by the already existing word, that is what we call semantic word building type. In the age of globalization, developed social links and hi-tech events, mankind needs names for them and there is a big number of such cases, as in the word quiet party along with the word composition, this type is used, words (composites of the word) are commonly known, but while analyzing we can clearly see that sense development is engaged to coin this neologism.
Blending is less popular, cases, like hathos, the blend of hate and pathos is marked.
Such types as affixation, acronimization (kippers – from «kids in parents' pockets eroding retirement savings») turned out to be not very productive. It can be explained by various reasons – 1) elaboration in forming, 2) difficulty in predicting (decoding) the information.
It is clear that more than 40% of the neologisms appeared in the nineties, it can be explained by the sudden jump in computer technologies and the more evident results of the sexual revolution. In the eighties, 24% of the new words were coined, that was more or less a stable period of the contemporary society. As for the 2000–2004, for this period more than 36% of the neologisms were built. That is the richest period, as the progress became faster, as well as, the time itself.
It’s the first time new words were fixed in newspapers. Such tabloids, as The INDEPENDENT (London), Chicago TRIBUNE, THE WASHINGTON POST, The AUSTRALIAN, CANADIAN Issues are the productive sources. The Internet sites give birth to the numerous words which deal with technologies, for instance, the esato.com gave life to the word BLUEJACKING. Not only English speaking countries tabloids are among the sources, THE JERUSALEM POST «bore» the floortime , etc. Some other local newspapers like THE DENVER POST, FLORIDA TIMES, THE TORONTO STAR, THE NATION, etc. can also be called the sources. Issues, discussed at conferences (Digital Rights Management Conference) can be the reasons for the new words appearance (darknet ) as well.
With the development of the society and the sexual revolution, which is still going on, new forms of relations between sexes and within family, new types of sex social status appeared. This sphere has got more new notions than ever before, since now people can easily change their sex and sexual orientation (gay and lesbian topic). Gaydar (an interesting composition Gay+ Dar , denoting a special sense while identifying gay from a straight person) or straight supermacist (a person who assumes that all heterosexuals are innately superior than homosexuals and they don’t have the right to be equally treated under the law) Moreover, there are new types of family forms and relations which explains the appearance of words, such as manny – male nanny, is a clear case in point.
Men and women links are also of interest, ¼ of all new notions (according to our investigation) make up in this sphere. Irritable Male Syndrome (-anger and irritableness in men caused by a sudden drop in testosterone levels, particularly when brought on by stress or the word) men breasts (excess fatty tissue that causes a man's chest to resemble a woman's breasts) show us how men begin to resemble a woman more and more, physically and psychologically. Or take for example, a metrosexual individual, who spends much money on his appearance and lifestyle.
The second richest branch is Computer. New computer technologies give rise to new words. Most of them are connected with the Internet and E – mail, as the Internet offers us more and more opportunities, as well as, all computer technologies. Software in many people’s lifetime has been mostly a wonderful way to live, because we're just learning how to do it and anybody with some time and talent and initiative can try out any crazy idea. We have so much processing power and so much memory and such great tools and we still fail, most times, to produce things that are fun to use. Neologisms like, GOOGLE, «spIM » became an indispensable part of Internet users’ speech. One can google and find any information he or she needs and the other gets spIM every time he or she uses Instant Messenger.
Culture sphere is developing along with the society, that is why it is the third richest. Television and food and drink branches have more fresh words, than ever now, and again, it is connected with the technological and social development. Individuals suffer from passive over-eating , that is the excessive eating of foods that are high in fat because the human body is slow to recognize the caloric content of rich foods; eating whatever is put in front of you, even to the point of discomfort. The ground for it all is the change of the life rhythm – shortage of time.
Science is the forth richest, new sciences and discoveries are made in this sphere – that is neurotheology, for example.
Technology and The world have the equal number, in the Technology branch, more than a half of all new words are connected with cell phones. The majority of civilized people have «cellys» to save time and money. Some have problems with BLUEJACKING while standing in a line in the supermarket (temporally hijacking another person’s cell phone by sending anonymousmessages using the Bluetooth system). Or one can make 911 butt call , that is definitely is not worth responding to.
Business and language are less influenced, these spheres are more or less stable, business – is because it is the matter of money. Market succeeds in creating immense quantities of (unevenly distributed) wealth, lifting people out of rural poverty and urban slums, in arranging that most people have jobs, that most things that are built that are needed, and the most things that are needed are built. These are not small accomplishments. Also, it can be marked that business is often a filthy practice. It encourages both vile venial and monstrous mortal sin, all as an organic consequence of the competitive marketplace. That explains our statistics, we have three new words, connected with this topic, and one of them deals with crime – 419 scam (fraud, making people pay money, which hope to get more later, the numbers «419» is the number of the law, prosecuting this type of a crime). The other word deals with the stock market – dead cat bounce (a temporary recovery from a major drop in a stock's price).
Language, is the sphere which is really flexible and prone to changes, but still people need more or less stable language system to communicate. New words in this sphere are kippers (an acronym) and himbo (an insult) or hathos ( feelings of pleasure derived from hating someone or something), they are a rare case in point.
As we can see 18 out of 50 words have new forms, some of the new-coined words have developed a paradigm of even three parts of speech, some only one. In most cases words have a noun as another part of speech, like in words neurotheology , the new form is neurotheologian or metrosexual – metrosexuality, also straight supremacist – straight supremacy . As for creating the adjectives, we have such examples, as hathos – hathotic, or spim – antispim and lipstick lesbian – lipstick with a suffix – ic highly employed. Verbs are also common: bluejacking – to bluejack, manscaping – to manscape, flash mob-to flash mob. Neologisms like, spim, flash mob are the brightest representatives to show how productive the words can be, they have a noun, a verb, an adjective and even they have a plural form – flash mobs , for example. Few words have a plural form. These facts show that while speaking sometimes people have to converse words into a different part of speech. The bigger paradigm of morphological forms the word develops the more probability it will have to survive for a while and even stay in the language. The reason for this event is that these new notions as well as words are gradually becoming the essential part of the civilized world.
According to our statistics, most words acquire a new meaning rather than a new word appears with a new notion. This can be explained by the fact, that there is not enough, we would say proper, words to express all the variety of newly created and used notions in the rapidly changing world.
New meaning were acquired when two (as it may seem) incompatible words are composed and a new word appears. For instance, words like, quiet party or global dimming, time porn were not of primary importance, moreover, there were not used and were not actual, if we take for example, the seventies or eighties of the 20th century. These things simply did not exist, or were not popular to the same extent as they are now. Or the word does not change at all, just the new meaning is implied – kidnap.
As for the simultaneous new notions and words creation, we can note, that they were created whether by acronimization (kipper) or blending (pomosexual, hathos ), those are the most productive and the simplest ways to imply two or more meanings, expressing some fresh ideas, in one word.
Conclusion