Lexis Journal in English Lexicology
12 | 2018 Lexical and Semantic Neology in English La néologie lexicale et sémantique en anglais
Denis Jamet and Adeline Terry (dir.)
Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/1075 DOI: 10.4000/lexis.1075 ISSN: 1951-6215
Publisher Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3
Electronic reference Denis Jamet and Adeline Terry (dir.), Lexis, 12 | 2018, « Lexical and Semantic Neology in English » [Online], Online since 14 December 2018, connection on 24 September 2020. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/lexis/1075 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/lexis.1075
This text was automatically generated on 24 September 2020.
Lexis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 1
The e-journal Lexis published its 12 th issue, devoted to “Lexical and Semantic Neology in English”, in 2018. Read the CFP. La revue électronique Lexis - revue de lexicologie anglaise a mis en ligne son numéro 12 en 2018. Celui-ci est consacré à la « néologie lexicale et sémantique en anglais ». Voir l'appel à contributions.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction Denis Jamet and Adeline Terry
Papers
Neology in children’s literature: A typology of occasionalisms Cécile Poix
The Neological Functions of Disease Euphemisms in English and French: Verbal Hygiene or Speech Pathology? Denis Jamet
The Complementarity of Crowdsourced Dictionaries and Professional Dictionaries viewed through the Filter of Neology Franck Sajous, Amélie Josselin-Leray and Nabil Hathout
Gender-biased neologisms: the case of man-X Océane Foubert and Maarten Lemmens
Where do new words like boobage, flamage, ownage come from? Tracking the history of ‑ age words from 1100 to 2000 in the OED3 Chris A. Smith
List of references Denis Jamet and Adeline Terry
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Introduction
Denis Jamet and Adeline Terry
It is fair to say that the very notion of “neology” may appear fuzzy and hard to define; consequently the definitions will vary according to linguists. That is the reason why the 12th issue of Lexis – Journal in English Lexicology has decided to focus on lexical and semantic neology in English, from a synchronic and diachronic approach. Why is this linguistic concept so difficult to define despite the various studies that have been devoted to this phenomenon? Neology is traditionally defined by lexicologists as the “incorporation of new items in the lexicon of a language” (“l’incorporation d’éléments nouveaux dans le lexique d’une langue” (Humbley [2006: 91]), but neology is not so easy to delimit and define, as one of the characteristic features of neologisms seems to be that they exist in “discourse” (“parole”) but not in “language” (“langue”), as they are not (yet) recorded in dictionaries (see Humbley [2006: 92], Pruvost & Sablayrolles [2003: 6]). Depending on the speakers, but also on the discourse where the candidate to neology has emerged, there exists a “neological sentiment” which may vary. Therefore, it seemed interesting to focus on both the linguistic and the extralinguistic contexts which surround the creation of neologisms in this issue, with a special emphasis on three main areas of research found, to varying degrees, in the five papers of this issue: • The first area of research tackles the definition and the motivation of neology by focusing on English, or by adopting a contrastive analysis between English or French; • The second area of research focuses on the issue of productivity, especially the productivity of the various word-formation processes and mechanisms for lexical creativity, be they about lexical or semantic neology, either by analyzing a specific word-formation process, or a combination or comparison of several; • The third area of research deals with the diffusion and the success of neologisms in English, by focusing on how neologisms are perceived, how they may evolve and how they thrive (how lexicographers, institutions, speakers, authors, etc. react to them). The three areas of research account for the difficulty to delimit and define clearly neology and neologisms: first, the definition depends on the fact that the linguistic realizations of neology – i.e. “neologisms” – are given different reactions according to speakers: some would consider a given occurrence a neologism, some a nonce-
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formation or hapax, when others would consider the occurrence a lexicalized word. A neologism is generally defined as a new lexeme or phrase entering a given language, or a new meaning taken by an existing lexeme or phrase in a given language; yet, neologisms are not always so easy to define, because when does a neologism cease to be a neologism? There is no clear-cut answer to the question, because, depending on lexicologists and lexicographers, the answer may vary: it may be before the lexeme or phrase is officially recorded in dictionaries, or when it is recorded in dictionaries. But if we choose the latter option, a question immediately arises: how long does a neologism remain a neologism? A neologism ceases to be a neologism when it ceases to be perceived as such, i.e. when the novelty accompanying it is no longer perceived by speakers of a given language – although different speakers may not have the same perception. The reasons and motivations behind the creation of neologisms may also vary, and account for the difficulty to clearly delimit the concept: a neologism is created either to fill in a lexical gap (a new object, a new concept is invented or discovered and needs to be named), to fine-tune an existing notion (a phenomenon which is possibly often accompanied by a slight semantic shift), but also because of a desire to play with language (be humorous, feeling of in-groupness, etc.). Neologisms in standard English – mostly found in teenage speech, as they are linked to generational criteria and as the main motivations do not seem to be to fill in a lexical gap – therefore need to be distinguished from neologisms in English for specialized languages – such as political and institutional neologisms, among others –, which are linked to the emergence of new concepts, of new disciplines requiring new terminology or lexicon. Broadly speaking, four different cases account for the creation of neologisms according to Pruvost & Sablayrolles [2003]: 1. A new signifier with a new meaning (i.e. ex-nihilo lexical creations: there are no examples for taboo language, as words referring to people of size already exist); 2. A new meaning for an existing signifier (i.e. widening or narrowing of meaning via metaphor, metonymy, semantic shift, etc.); 3. A new signifier for an existing meaning (i.e. a new signifier is either invented, or borrowed from the actual lexicon, with a new meaning); 4. An existing signifier is reintroduced (i.e. a rare case when an existing form which was out of usage is used again, with or without the same meaning). The two main types of neology, semantic neology (a new meaning for an existing signifier) and lexical neology (a new signifier for an existing or non-existing meaning) correspond to cases #2 and #3. Another difficulty is that the time-span between an individual, discursive neologism to an accepted, lexicalized neologism can vary from several months to several years, depending on the diffusion and success, i.e. on the frequency of use of the neologism. Some factors favor the propagation and the potential success of neologisms, but the success of a given neologism paradoxically leads to its demise, as the frequency of use and lexicalization are synonymous with the loss of the neological sentiment for this ex- neologism to be. The lifespan of a neologism is difficult to predict, even if some neologisms are more suitable to enter the English lexicon according to the semantic field, the period, the register, etc.
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Then, even if the very concepts of “neology” and “neologisms” are tricky to define, they both play a major role in the creation and expansion of the lexicon, and exhibit one of the fundamental dimensions of lexical creation and expansion: creativity. The papers included in this issue are based on English and French; they are organized from the most discursive, individual, non-lexicalized occurrences of neologisms to the more collective, stabilized, lexicalized occurrences of neologisms, i.e. those recorded in dictionaries. In her paper entitled “Neology in children’s literature: A typology of occasionalisms”, Cécile Poix investigates neology in literary contexts. Her basic assumption is that literary texts contain many neologisms as the principle of poetic license allows writers to deviate from linguistic norms. She argues that word formation in literary texts deserves to be addressed as writers often take liberties. Her paper more specifically focuses on the status of neologisms in the specific discursive context of children’s literature and provides an analysis of those neologisms. Moreover, the author also uses Tournier’s classification of matrices of lexicogenesis [2007] and a corpus of children’s books to provide a typology of nonce formation processes for those occasionalisms. The second paper of the volume discusses the aspects of word-formation processes of euphemisms for illness in English and French, by resorting to a comparative analysis. In “The Neological Functions of Disease Euphemisms in English and French: Verbal Hygiene or Speech Pathology?”, Denis Jamet aims to show that taboo language plays a significant role in the expansion of the lexicon as new euphemisms are constantly created. Euphemisms exhibit one of the fundamental factors in the evolution of any language: creativity. The author also argues that the process of creating new euphemisms to circumvent taboo is cyclic, and that the story of euphemistic language is never-ending as once euphemisms run out of euphemistic power and can no longer soften the threat of a disease, new euphemisms are created to replace them. In the third paper of the volume, “The Complementarity of Crowdsourced Dictionaries and Professional Dictionaries viewed through the Filter of Neology”, Franck Sajous, Amélie Josselin-Leray and Nabil Hathout provide a comparison between dictionaries compiled by professional lexicographers and dictionaries written by the general public, through the filter of neology. Their study shows that it can prove quite difficult to deal with neologisms in dictionaries – mostly because there is no real consensus on the neological status of lexical units – and that the phenomena which can lead to linguistic change are numerous and complex. They conclude that crowdsourced dictionaries complement professional dictionaries and that amateur dictionaries have much potential in the study of neologisms – both lexical and semantic – as they cover a variety of specialized fields and record words that are not found in professional dictionaries. Océane Foubert and Maarten Lemmens in “Gender-biased neologisms: the case of man-X” investigate man-neologisms such as man bun or manspread and reveal that those neologisms carry a gender-specific meaning rather that a generic one; a semantic analysis points to the fact that there are various representations of gender in language and more specifically in man-neologisms. The authors argue that there are four main motivations behind the coinage of neologisms: the strengthening of differences, the confirmation of gender stereotypes, the reappropriation of domains generally associated with women, and the naming of unwelcome male behaviors. The neologisms
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aiming at the first two categories are less likely to be diffused than the last two, which however seem to be less numerous. The last paper of this issue, “Where do new words like boobage, flamage, ownage come from? Tracking the history of ‑age words from 1100 to 2000 in the OED3” is a diachronic lexicographic study which deals with the morpho-semantic behavior of –age forms in the OED3. Chris Smith aims to determine the patterns of formation of –age forms to explain the diachronic processes that enable a loan form to become an independent productive pattern of derivation. She argues that the pattern of –age derivation has remained stable since around 1200: -age forms have been very productive, and the predictability of the relation between base word and derivative may explain this continued productivity through centuries. Finally, the author found that –age forms are not likely to be lexicalized and provides two possible explanations: because they are transparent or because of their productivity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
HUMBLEY John, 2006, « La néologie : interface entre ancien et nouveau », in GRENNSTEIN Rosalind, Publication de la Sorbonne, Volume 28, Série ‘Langues et langages’, 91-104.
PRUVOST Jean & SABLAYROLLES Jean-François, 2012 (2003), Les néologismes, Coll. ‘Que sais-je ?’, Paris : PUF.
AUTHORS
DENIS JAMET Université de Lyon (UJML3) & University of Arizona [email protected]
ADELINE TERRY Université de Lyon (UJML3) [email protected]
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Papers Articles
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Neology in children’s literature: A typology of occasionalisms
Cécile Poix
Introduction
1 The overwhelming presence of coinages in English literature for children implies that lexical innovation is essential to the fantasy-driven world of children’s books. An opaque coinage often stands out like a magic formula. The fate of such nonce words depends on their playfulness – and a possible film adaptation of the book.
2 Several distinctions need to be made in the study of neology in children’s literature. Fictional coinages do not fill any lexical gap, nor do they enrich the lexicon. Thus, the ‘one off’ characteristic of fictional coinages is a predominant feature of such new words. The terminology of nonce formation is described in this article, as well as two main functions of occasionalisms in the context of children’s literature.
3 Adopting J. Tournier’s taxonomy of lexicogenesis matrices (matrices lexicogéniques) [2007: 51], this article reviews coinages extracted from a corpus of ten classic children’s books. Both external and internal matrices are described while the sub-classes of this typology are enhanced to address all nonce formation processes encountered.
1. Neology in children’s literature
4 According to J. Pruvost & J.-F. Sablayrolles [2003: 54], a coinage is a linguistic sign like any other associating a signified (meaning) and a signifier (form) both pointing globally towards an extralinguistic referent. Coinages in the context of children’s literature range from transparent formations to opaque creations which do not necessarily have a clear extralinguistic referent. This section reviews different types of coinages and their terminology, as well as the context of children’s literature.
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1.1 Literary coinages
5 Coining a new word in fiction cannot be compared with spontaneous word formation in speech. Authors purposely using new words or phrases do so for a reason that is highly correlated to the context of their books.
1.1.1 Occasionalisms, nonce formations and neologisms
6 There are several reasons for “the coining or use of new words or phrases” [OED3]. In literature, the main motivation for new word formations is not to enrich the lexicon but to enrich the text itself. P. Hohenhaus [2007: 17-18] makes a distinction between ‘neologism’ and ‘nonce-formation’ based on their integration into the lexicon. For him, neologisms are “words that are ‘young’ diachronically speaking, but which nevertheless have already entered the language as more or less institutionalised vocabulary items”, whereas nonce formations are “in fact new – in the sense of newly actively formed in performance, as opposed to being retrieved from the lexicon”.
7 Since there is little chance for literary coinages to enter the language, they can be classified as nonce formations.
8 L. Bauer makes the same distinction [2004: 77], stating that “there is a tradition of restricting the term ‘neologism’ to a number of specific subsets of newly coined words.” For him, the contrast between ‘nonce word’ and ‘neologism’ is manifest once “a newly coined word enters the general vocabulary of the language”, thus gaining the status of ‘neologism’.
9 However, L. Bauer [2004: 78] defines nonce word or nonce formation as “a newly coined word, invented on the spot to serve some immediate need”. Previously, L. Bauer [1983: 45] had defined nonce formation as “a new complex word coined by a speaker/ writer on the spur of the moment to cover some immediate need”. Neither definition truly corresponds to nonce formation in literature as it is hard to conceive that an author would coin a word impulsively without much planning and consideration. L. Bauer indicates [2004: 78] that “for some authorities a nonce word is by definition ephemeral, and then contrasts with a neologism”. Ephemerality is not the best criterion to define coinages in literature, as books can survive through centuries. However, the coinage is entrapped in the book where it is found, with an uncertainty that its use will spread outside its contextual situation.
10 There is another broad definition of nonce words by D. Crystal [2002: 132] which does not fit fictional nonce formation: “A nonce word (from the sixteenth century phrase for the nonce, meaning ‘for the once’) is a lexeme created for temporary use, to solve an immediate problem of communication”. However, in literature, the author purposely coins nonce words for poetic effect and not to solve a communication problem.
11 The term nonce word, according to the OED3, was coined by lexicographer James Murray to refer to words used “on one specific occasion or in one specific text or writer’s works”. This general definition matches the coinages encountered in literature. Though dating back from the nineteenth century, it does not reflect current research on neology.
12 W.U. Dressler & B. Tumfart [2017: 155-156] recount linguists’ studies on literary nonce formations and define the term occasionalism, coined by E. Chanpira:
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The interest of linguists in poetic and literary language in general has an old and prominent tradition – for example Watkins (2001) in Indo-European linguistics, Spitzer (1910) in Romance linguistics, and Jakobson (1960) and Coseriu (1971) in structural linguistics, the latter insisting that literary writers are capable of exhausting the potentialities of a language to a greater extent than non-literary writers. For generative linguistics, we can name Bierwisch (1965), who adapted to this model the focus on poetic deviations from “normal” language, an approach inherent in the Prague School concept of alienation, prized by Mukarovsky (1970). For Russian linguistics, one must name Chanpira (1966), who coined the term occasionalism, meaning a new word created for a poetic function at a specific place in a literary text, and which has little chance to be accepted by the language community as a neologism (more in Zemskaja 1973: 227–240).
13 The term occasionalism and the above definition are adopted in this article for all coinages encountered in the study of neology in children’s literature. I henceforth refer to the process as nonce formation and to the result as occasionalism.
14 J. Munat [2007: 166], in a descriptive study of novel word formations in children’s literature, states that “these fly-by-night constructions find their raison d’être exclusively in the text for which they have been created and will be stored in the mental lexicon only for the duration of the reading experience”.
15 However, the success of the book – and a potential cinematographic adaptation – will enable such occasionalisms to endure and gain currency. There is then no reason for them not to follow the cycles of consolidation and establishment (see H.-J. Schmid [2011: 71-81]). As such, the adjective runcible was first attested in Edward Lear’s limerick The Owl and the Pussy-cat (1870). The origin of the occasionalism, according to the OED3, is uncertain: “perhaps an entirely arbitrary formation, or perhaps an arbitrary alteration of rouncival”, obsolete adjective meaning ‘gigantic, huge; robust.’ E. Lear’s occasionalism was used to modify various nouns: cat (Laughable Lyrics, 1877), hat (Nonsense Songs and Stories, 1888), goose and wall (Nonsense Songs and Stories, 1895). The adjective runcible was further attested by other authors according to the OED3. Records of consolidation are dated through the nineteenth century until 2004. Unlike any suggestion provided by E. Lear for his books of verse, the adjective is lexicalised in the complex lexeme runcible spoon, which is a curved three-pronged fork with one sharp outer edge. Despite its institutionalisation, runcible spoon remains absent from the BNC and shows only a frequency of two in the COCA, one of which is a proper noun. However, runcible has not completely dropped out of the collective lexicon, though the word is mostly used metalinguistically, to debate about its meaning and etymology.
16 As H.-J. Schmid puts it [2011: 75], neologisms are “new words that have succeeded in surviving beyond a one-off use in an ad-hoc situation”. Therefore, a successful occasionalism can gain the status of neologism once it starts being used outside the scope of the book it emanated from.
17 In literature, the author neologizes, creating occasionalisms – and not neologisms – which are not meant to enrich the lexicon but to enrich the text. This liberty follows the principles of poetic license, which W.U. Dressler [1993: 5028] explains as follows:
18 In Classical rhetoric, Latin poetarum licentia ‘license of poets’ meant a liberation of a grammatical or stylistic obligation in favor of another obligation such as the Aristotelian effects of alienating, of generalizing, of making language sublime, etc. Thus what commonly had to be regarded as a proscribed error could be allowed if motivated by some literary purpose and/or accepted because of the poet’s authority. Here lies the
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origin of the concept of deviation from linguistic norms, in our case from norms of word-formation.
19 Authors play with the lexicon, as they use stylistic devices, to refine the text, taking liberties with norms of word formation.
1.1.2. Children’s literature
20 Children’s literature is complex to define. To understand what is prototypical of children’s literature, a valuable resource is the article written by K. Lesnik-Oberstein, entitled “What is Children’s Literature? What is Childhood?” [2002: 15-29]. Here is the introduction by the editor, Peter Hunt [2002: 14]: The study of children’s literature involves three elements – the literature, the children, and the adult critics. The relationship between these is complex, partly because childhood and ‘the child’ are difficult to define, partly because adults need to ‘construct’ the child in order to talk about the books, and partly because the literature is assumed to be ‘good for’ children in some way. The tensions which are generated are fundamental to the ways in which we think and talk about the subject.
21 Children’s literature is a literature written ‘for’ children. If childhood – simply speaking – is “the stage of life or period during which one is a child; the time from birth to puberty” [OED3] then children’s literature has a highly diverse audience. The recommended reading age is usually defined by the publisher and might reflect marketing decisions. For instance, The Hobbit was initially written by J.R.R. Tolkien for his children. Published in 1937, it was awarded a prize as Best Juvenile Fiction by the New York Herald Tribune. Currently, and according to commonsensemedia.org1, “it makes a great read-aloud for kids 8 and up and read-alone for 10 or 11 and up.” However, the book, first published in France in 1969 by Stock, was initially meant for an adult audience. Only in 1976 did it join the Bibliothèque Verte with an acknowledgement as a children’s book2. However, since the success of the film adaptation that followed the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the book is now ranking in France amongst the best sellers for teenage and young adults3.
22 Children’s literature is also meant to be ‘good for’ children. Defining what is ‘good for’ children is subjective and mostly left for parents to decide in accordance with their views on religion, politics, family values, political correctness, education and development, etc. What is ‘good for’ children is also subject to a historical perspective and previously acclaimed books can become controversial4.
23 Children’s literature is subject to a multi-layered censorship, as the book must appeal to the editor publishing it, an educational authority potentially recommending it, the parent buying it and possibly reading it out loud. But most of all, it must be attractive and interesting to the child. I. Pascua-Febles [2006: 111] states that “Children’s literature and translating for children […] is the result of a combination of different systems within a culture: social, educational and literary.” It is therefore interesting to analyse neology in a literary context that is potentially influenced by education. K. Lesnik-Oberstein [2002: 20] points out certain questions that arise with regard to children’s literature: what “levels of cognitive development [are] thought to be necessary to understanding the content of the book;” should the author write up or down; what is good writing? This article does not provide an answer to these questions but inventories the types of neology encountered in children’s literature.
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24 To analyse occasionalisms in children’s literature, I compiled a corpus of children’s classics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My corpus is multilingual and aligned. It comprises English, French, German and Italian as both source and target languages. Therefore, the choice of books was restricted by the availability of translation in all other three languages. I endeavoured to select books with much poetic license. From this corpus, other languages than English may be studied, as well as translation. However, this article only reviews English and does not reflect on diachronic variations.
25 For the purpose of this article, I will only review the data where English is the source language. The selection of children’s books by British writers used in this study is as follows: Charles Dickens Oliver Twist [1837], Lewis Carroll Alice’s adventures in Wonderland [1865], Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island [1882], Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book [1894], John Ronald Reuel Tolkien The Hobbit [1937], James Matthew Barrie Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) [1911], Clive Staples Lewis The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe [1950], Roald Dahl The BFG [1982], Philip Pullman Northern Lights [1995] and Joanne K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone [1997].
26 The above-listed British corpus is made-up of over 735,000 tokens and 20,781 word- types. Candidates for nonce formation were detected computationally with an exclusion list of attested words with British spelling: the Mieliestronk list5.
1.2 Types of nonce formation (process)
27 Typologies of word formation processes can vary depending on their theoretical framework (see J.-F. Sablayrolles [2000] and P. Štekauer [2000]). In her study of lexical creativity in children’s literature, J. Munat [2007: 167] analyses coinages – according to W.U. Dressler’s classification – as non-rule-governed items, with the following subcategories (of which she only contemplates the first and last): 1) metamorphology, comprising punning, linguistic games and nonce formation; 2) premorphology, or children’s inventions prior to development of the module of morphological grammar; 3) paramorphology, including echo-words, blends, back-formation and onomastic creations.
28 Assuming that lexical innovation in children’s literature is a recreational process that can be applied to any lexicological pattern, for the purposes of this article, I have favoured another lexicogenic frame to analyse occasionalisms and have chosen J. Tournier’s matrices [2007: 51]. Tournier defines internal and external matrices. The latter is when the coinage borrows linguistic material from other languages. The internal matrices of lexicogenesis are split into three types: morphosemantic, semantic and morphological neology. For each type of neology, nonce formation in children’s literature can be a case of word formation, word de-formation or word creation.
1.2.1. Word formation
29 H.-J. Schmid [2011: 70] defines word formation as the expansion of the lexicon “through the formation of new lexemes from already existing morphological material”. An example of word formation from my corpus is P. Pullman’s coinage anbaric as in the following excerpt:
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(1) The Common Room and the Library were lit by anbaric light, but the Scholars preferred the older, softer naphtha lamps in the Retiring Room.
30 P. Pullman’s language is well documented and Oxford University Professor S. Horobin, in an OxfordWords blog6, provides us with the following explanation of anbaric: In Lyra’s world lights are fuelled by anbaric rather than electric energy. This term returns to the roots of the Latin electricus, which is itself derived from the Latin word electrum, ‘amber’. Electric was originally adopted to describe objects that develop static electricity when rubbed, a property first observed in amber. Pullman’s coinage anbaric pursues the etymology of this word further back to the Arabic word anbar, from which the English word amber ultimately descends.
31 The coinage anbaric, as seen in (1), is thus the affixed form (internal matrices) of a loanword – also called borrowing (external matrix). P. Pullman used further derivation of anbar: anbarographs, anbarology, anbaromagnetic, which follow standard word formation processes described in J. Tournier’s internal matrices (the above-listed examples are all cases of affixation with combining forms).
32 However, the occurrences of occasionalisms in my data did not all fit J. Tournier’s subcategories, which had to be enhanced.
1.2.2. Word de-formation
33 In children’s literature, the nonce formation of occasionalisms often tends to be the de- formation of existing lexical units. Lexical units are altered to reproduce mistakes made by children in the language acquisition phase (e.g. the segmentation mistake a norphan7 for ‘an orphan’). They can also be muddled up lexemes or phrases meant to produce a humorous effect on the reader: rhinostossterisses8 (for ‘rhinoceroses’), Sweden sour taste9 (for ‘sweet and sour taste’).
34 Such alterations under poetic license are sometimes referred to as ‘metaplasm,’ though W.U. Dressler deems the term outdated [1993: 5028]: The Classical and rhetorical concepts ‘solecism’ (erroneous expression) and ‘metaplasm’ (solecism accepted by habit or because of the authority of its creator) are outdated and have largely been replaced by ‘neologism.’
35 In the OED3, metaplasm is defined as “the alteration of a word by addition, removal, or transposition of letters or syllables”. There are several occurrences in my corpus where the signifier is altered, and I refer to this process not as metaplasm but as word de- formation.
1.2.3. Word creation
36 In children’s literature, nonce formation is not limited to word formation and word de- formation. Word creation (also called word manufacture or creation ex-nihilo) is common. Word creation, as H.-J. Schmid puts it [2011: 69] is when words “originate neither formally nor semantically from morphological material that already exists”. Such occasionalisms – which do not seem to have a clear referent in the extralinguistic world – generally reinforce the fictional illusion of the text. Word creations often combine a free morpheme with a nonsense word. This is illustrated in example (2) below, where R. Dahl uses obscure euphemistic occasionalisms to reproduce the swearing of nine angry giants:
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(2) ‘I is flushbunkled!’ roared the Fleshlumpeater. ‘I is splitzwiggled!’ yelled the Ghildchewer ‘I is swogswalloped!’ bellowed the Bonecruncher. ‘I is goosegruggled!’ howled the Manhugger. ‘I is gunzleswiped!’ shouted the Meatdripper. ‘I is fluckgungled!’ screamed the Maidmasher. ‘I is slopgroggled!’ squawked the Gizzardgulper. ‘I is crodsquinkled!’ yowled the Bloodbottler. ‘I is bopmuggered!’ screeched the Butcher Boy.
37 The morphemes that can be identified in (2) do not necessary lead to a meaningful lexical unit. Sometimes, free morphemes are created without any known etymon. They are usually explained by the author in the co-text, such as the example for J.R.R. Tolkien’s mithril below:
(3) It was of silver-steel which the elves call mithril, and with it went a belt of pearls and crystals.
38 The occasionalism mithril in (3) is explained in the OED3 as a “Tolkienian arbitrary formation” and defined as follows: “In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien (subsequently adopted in other fantasy contexts with reference to Tolkien): a rare silver-coloured precious metal of great hardness and beauty.”
1.2.4. Combined formations
39 Even if few occasionalisms in children’s literature follow the standard patterns of word formation, the majority are either a case of word de-formation or word-creation. Both have a strong impact on the reading. The reader has to pause and decipher words which are either difficult to pronounce and/or cognitively uneconomical. Here is an extreme case of combined formations by R. Dahl: ‘Words,’ he said, ‘is oh such a twitch-tickling (4) problem to me all my life. So you must simply try to be patient and stop squibbling (5). As I am telling you before, I know exactly what words I am wanting to say, but somehow or other they is always getting squiff-squiddled around (6).’
40 In the above-mentioned excerpt, we have three puzzling occasionalisms:
(4) The compound twitch-tickling cannot be compositionally understood. Even though it originates formally from existing morphological material, none of the sets of meanings associated with twitch or tickling can explain the meaning of this composition. It could be a phonologically motivated creation based on the assonance in /ɪ/. Thus, I do not consider this nonce formation to be a word formation but a case of word creation that can only be analysed syntactically as an adjective modifying the noun problem. (5) Squibbling is a word de-formation of squabbling. (6) Squiff-squiddled around is an opaque word creation for which the best analysis I could come up with is a phonologically motivated de-formation of squirrel around.
41 A possible rephrasing of R. Dahl’s excerpt would be: (4) words are a tricky problem, (5) stop squabbling and (6) I squirrel around for words. Even if reading this excerpt is uneconomical, it is likely to entertain the reader. Thus, the nonce formation of
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occasionalisms is not meant to enrich the lexicon but is likely to be a recreational process whose aim is to enrich the text.
1.3. Two functions of occasionalisms: hypostatisation and attention-seeking devices
42 There is a strong history in children’s literature of defying language conventions, referred to as nonsense. Nonsense is a literary genre, popularised by E. Lear and L. Carroll in the mid-nineteenth century. In J.-J. Lecercle’s words [1994: 3]: “the genre is structured by the contradiction, which I shall eventually formulate in terms of a dialectic, between over-structuring and de-structuring, subversion and support”.
43 Nonsense is recurrent in nursery rhymes: Hey! Diddle, Diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such fun, And the dish ran away with the spoon.
44 The above traditional eighteenth-century rhyme is designed to delight children with impossible images and to develop their sense of fantasy. In fact, much of English children’s literature, including nursery rhymes and fairy tales, also belongs to the fantasy genre, which explores the realms of imaginary or magical worlds.
1.3.1. Hypostatisation
45 The fantasy and the nonsense genres give opportunities for the nonce formation of occasionalisms to name animals (wargs), vegetables (snozzcumber), people (Muggles) and other entities which have no existence in the real world. Here are a few examples to illustrate this phenomenon:
(7) But even the wild Wargs (for so the evil wolves over the Edge of the Wild were named) cannot climb trees. [J.R.R. Tolkien, chapter 6].
46 According to the OED3, J.R.R. Tolkien coined this word from Old Norse vargr [wolf] and Old English wearg [villain]. In The Hobbit, Warg is spelt with a capital initial. In later fiction, the noun is spelt in lower case.
(8) Nothing is growing except for one extremely icky-poo vegetable. It is called the snozzcumber. [R. Dahl, chapter 8].
47 In the printed book, an illustration by Quentin Blake of a giant cucumber gives easy access to the meaning of snozzcumber. R. Dahl took the liberty of segmenting a morpheme to create the stem cumber. Even if snozz10 and cumber are not attested as concrete nouns, the illustration helps anchor the reader to the representation of the vegetable called snozzcumber.
(9) ‘A Muggle,’ said Hagrid. ‘It’s what we call non-magic folk like them’ [J.K. Rowling, chapter 4].
48 According to the OED3, Muggle is derived from the noun ‘mug’ and defined as such: “In the fiction of J. K. Rowling: a person who possesses no magical powers. Hence in
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allusive and extended uses: a person who lacks a particular skill or skills, or who is regarded as inferior in some way.”
49 Hypostatisation, a term introduced by L. Lipka, describes “the power of words in concept formation, namely that the mere existence of a name implies to a speaker that a corresponding entity must exist in extralinguistic reality” [P. Hohenhaus 2007: 20]. P. Hohenhaus further explains that fictitious words reinforce the overall fictional illusion. Thus, hypostatisation is a primary function of occasionalisms in the nonsensical and fantasy-driven context of children’s literature. In (7), (8) and (9), we have seen that the co-text and the illustration can provide the necessary information for the reader to access the concept.
1.3.2. Attention-seeking devices (ASDs)
50 Other occasionalisms, such as the occurrences in (2) have too little co(n)text and no illustration that would allow precise meaningful reading. Some authors are prone to using ambiguous language. In stylistics, this is usually referred to as foregrounding. G. Leech & M. Short explain [2007: 23-24] that – for the Prague Linguistic Circle – the poetic function of language is distinguished by the foregrounding of the linguistic code: This means that the aesthetic exploitation of language takes the form of surprising the reader into a fresh awareness of, and sensitivity to, the linguistic medium which is normally taken for granted as an ‘automatised’ background of communication. […] This foregrounding is not limited to the more obvious poetic devices, such as metaphor and alliteration. It may take the form of denying the normally expected clues of context and coherence. […] Class 2 prose is opaque in the sense that the medium attracts attention in its own right; and indeed, the interpretation of sense may be frustrated and obstructed by abnormalities in the use of the lexical and grammatical features of the medium.11
51 In linguistics, P. Hohenhaus [2007: 23] explains that “it has frequently been pointed out, in particular by L. Lipka [1987, 2000], that one important function of WFs [word formations] is to serve as so-called ‘attention-seeking devices’ (ASDs), which can be understood as a subfunction of more general ‘foregrounding.’” In children’s books, occasionalisms are often opaque lexical units that a reader needs to decipher (e.g. scrumdiddlyumptious12). This is cognitively uneconomical but definitely works as an ASD.
52 The length of a lexeme can make it conspicuous. Prototypically, English words are monosyllabic or disyllabic. A scientific study by P. Flipsen Jr. [2006: 293-294] reveals that, in English, word length in spontaneous speech averages 1.2 syllables per word for children and ranges around 1.4 for adults. This explains the tendency to shorten words through clipping and initials. Therefore, lengthy occasionalisms will automatically stand out as attention-seeking devices. The difficulty to be spoken out loud (Hjckrrh13) is another means to make occasionalisms stand out. Also, reduplication can catch the attention of the reader (Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tchk14).
2. Typology of occasionalisms
53 Any classification requires a theoretical framework, and I have chosen to use J. Tournier’s lexicogenesis matrices (matrices lexicogéniques) as the basic structure of my analysis. In Introduction Descriptive à la Lexicogénétique de l’Anglais Contemporain,
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J. Tournier presents the word-formation processes of contemporary English in internal and external matrices.
2.1. External matrix
54 The external matrix refers to coinages borrowing linguistic material from another language. In children’s literature, I found loanwords (also called borrowings) from other languages, as well as from forgotten English material. Borrowing in literature contributes to deictic anchoring and can reinforce the feeling of strangeness. Here are a few examples from my data.
(10) ‘Sikes is not, I suppose?’ inquired the Jew, with a disappointed countenance. ‘Non istwentus, as the lawyers say,’ replied the little man, shaking his head, and looking amazingly sly. [C. Dickens, chapter 26].
55 The Latin borrowing non istwentus is a deformation of non est inventus [he or she has not been found] and is likely to show that the character has a smattering of Latin, here seen as the language of academia.
(11) Mael, mael, Kala Nag! (Go on, go on, Black Snake!) Dant do! (Give him the tusk!) Somalo! Somalo! (Careful, careful!) Maro! Mar! (Hit him, hit him!) [R. Kipling, chapter 11].
56 R. Kipling was born in India where he returned after completing his studies in England. The Jungle Book is full of borrowings translated by the author in metalinguistic comments. It is unsure if the borrowings are indeed from Indian languages or fictional. Kipling allows his jungle animals to speak and the reader is immersed in the fantasy world anyway.
(12) The Master and the Librarian were old friends and allies, and it was their habit, after a difficult episode, to take a glass of brantwijn and console each other. (P. Pullman, chapter 2). […] The kind lady saw him settled on a bench against the wall, and provided by a silent serving-woman with a mug of chocolatl from the saucepan on the iron stove. [P. Pullman, chapter 3].
57 The characters in Northern Lights drink brantwijn and chocolatl. These beverages sound exotic, though they are nothing more than plain brandy and hot chocolate. The etymology of brandy, according to the Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories [1991: 64] reveals that the word is derived from Middle Dutch brantwijn. The Merriam-Webster online section Words at Play15 also reveals that chocolātl is a Nahuatl root word, “from the combined words chikolli meaning ‘hook,’ probably referring to the beater used to mix chocolate with water, and ātl, meaning ‘water’ or ‘liquid.’” Nahuatl was the language spoken in central Mexico by the powerful Aztecs.
(13) Old fat spider spinning in a tree! / Old fat spider can’t see me! / Attercop! Attercop! / Won’t you stop, / Stop your spinning and look for me! [J.R.R. Tolkien, chapter 8].
58 In the OED3, attercop is listed as an obsolete word meaning spider, “from Old English attorcoppa, < átor, attor, poison + coppa, derivative of cop top, summit, round head, or copp cup, vessel; in reference to the supposed venomous properties of spiders”.
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59 There are many more borrowings in my data of children’s literature with a similar function. Examples (10), (11), (12) and (13) show that such loanwords do not fill a lexical gap, but the external linguistic material is deliberately used to increase the strangeness of the reading.
2.2. Internal matrices
60 J. Tournier’s internal matrices are divided into morphosemantic, semantic and morphological neology. The coinages in my data can easily be split into these three categories. However, since an occasionalism can be a case of word formation, word de- formation or word creation, I had to enhance the sub-classes of word-formation processes described by J. Tournier.
2.2.1. Morphosemantic occasionalisms
61 For J. Tournier, there are two sub-classes of morphosemantic neology. The first one is about construction: affixation (prefixation, suffixation and back-formation16) and composition (compounds and blends). The other concerns phonological motivation with onomatopoeia and ideophones (also called phonaesthesia).
62 In my lexicon of occasionalisms, I identified several types of morphosemantic neology (new form and meaning).
2.2.1.1. Construction
63 A multitude of potential words can be coined by affixation. This type of occasionalism, in my opinion, is less interesting to analyse as potential words are not idiosyncratic (e.g. P. Pullman coins semi-humans for bears which are forced to be more human-like). There are more interesting instances in my data of unnecessary coinages, which automatically work as ASDs. For instance, adding an unnecessary suffix (foulsome meaning ‘foul’) or replacing an affix with others (disgustable, disguterous, disgustive instead of ‘disgusting’). These are cases of word de-formation. There are also cases of word-creation (e.g. mispise, possibly coined from ‘despise’). I have not identified any instances of back-formation, which does not necessarily exclude this process for nonce formation.
64 Compounds, as explained by J. Munat [2007: 176] “are typically formed of one recognisable free root combined with a nonsense word (bumplehammer, dogswoggler) or two semantically unrelated words: […] fizzwiggler, gobblefunk, resulting in vaguely familiar, but ultimately uninterpretable nonce words”. When compounds are transparent (e.g. kidsnatched for kidnapped 17), their coinage is generally unnecessary. Following the ‘blocking’ principle (see L. Bauer [2004: 22]), Dahl violates the synonymy constraint when coining kidsnatched, though this occasionalism allows new connotations. Blends are also present in children’s literature: horrigust [ HORR(I)ble x d(I)sGUST] or wonderveg [WONDERful x VEGetable]. I have also identified three coinages by R. Dahl with the same ending: delumptious, gloriumptious, glumptious. My analysis is that from ‘scrumptious’, R. Dahl formed the blends delumptious [deli(cious) x scrump(tious)], and gloriumptious [glori(ous) x scrumpti(ous)]. The analysis of glumptious is not so obvious and the co-text does not provide any clue as to what the initial gl might refer to. According to V. Renner [2015: 121-122] a lexical blend, prototypically, is identified
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morphologically by the acts of clipping and overlapping, however, it also must “coordinate semantics”. There are few words in English that could be clipped to gl and overlap in ous, namely glorious, glamourous, glaucous and glutinous. It is possible that R. Dahl would have coined another lexical blend for ‘glorious.’ The other three candidates are unlikely to coordinate semantics with ‘scrumptious,’ especially since the coined adjectives modify ‘food’ and ‘music.’ As there are several occurrences of coinages ending in -umptious in R. Dahl’s The BFG, I am inclined to consider the emergence of a morpheme/suffix -umptious (meaning ‘very enjoyable, delicious’), playing the same role as the -gate suffix in English words referring to a scandal.
2.2.1.2. Phonological motivation
65 Undeniably, a link between sound and meaning can be established in children’s literature. J. Tournier makes a distinction between ideophonic and onomatopoeic elements. He chooses the term ideophone [2007: 139] coined and defined by C.M. Doke as “a vivid representation of an idea in sound”.
66 Phonological motivation can be the only means to understand occasionalisms. For instance, R. Dahl describes a character:
(14) The grueful gruncious Jack (R. Dahl, chapter 14).
67 The word de-formation by affixation grueful < gruesome is easy to understand. However, the word creation gruncious is opaque and its meaning is understood from the reduplication of the alliterative phoneme /gr/ as the growling of a ferocious animal. According to J. Tournier, /gr/ as an onomatopoeic element means groan [2007: 162]. However, as an ideophonic element (also called phonesteme) it symbolises seizing (as in ‘grab’, ‘grip’) [2007: 149]. Such distinctions are complex and hazardous. Extensive research on sound symbolism is available, especially the work of H. Elsen on onomastics in literary works. She refers to the broad definition of sound symbolism by J.B. Nuckolls “when a sound unit such as a phoneme, syllable, feature, or tone is said to go beyond its linguistic function as a contrastive, nonmeaning-bearing unit, to directly express some kind of meaning (Nuckolls 1999: 228)” [Elsen 2017: 492]. H. Elsen demonstrates that phonemes are linked with emotions and that the features of a fictional character could be perceived by the sound of its name.
68 Without objecting to sound symbolism, this article does not endeavour to explore its depth as a nonce formation process. Onomatopoeias, however, are abundant in children’s literature and potentially less difficult to analyse.
69 According to J. Tournier, onomatopoeias represent 1.2 percent of words recorded in English dictionaries. This word-formation process is not very productive (or productively attested by lexicographers) since their creation is usually initiated by playful impulse and the majority of such neologisms are unlikely to become lexicalised.
70 Neological onomatopoeias are plentiful in R. Kipling’s Jungle Book (for instance: Aaarh, Aaa-ssp, Hhrrmph, Hmph, Rrrhha, Rrrmph, Sssss, Urrr, Yarrh, etc.). Such onomatopoeias add a sound effect to the reading. In my corpus, there are several occurrences of occasionalisms using onomatopoeias in compounds. There is not always a semantic link between the onomatopoeia and a possible referent. For instance, Dahl uses fizz to coin several occasionalisms:
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(15) The filthy old fizzwiggler! (an insult) (16) We is going fast as a fizzlecrump! (simile indicating it is something fast) (17) fizzwinkel (noun whose meaning can only be guessed from the co-text): “Are you sure there's nothing else to eat around here except those disgusting smelly snozzcumbers?” she asked. “Not even a fizzwinkel,” answered the Big Friendly Giant. (18) Pilfflefizz! (an interjection) (19) zipfizzing off (phrasal verb that only partially makes sense with its co- text): “That is all the giants zippfizzing off to another country to guzzle human beans,” the BFG said.
71 Each reader is likely to have a different interpretation of occasionalisms (15), (16), (17), (18) and (19). None of them bear the meaning of fizz as defined by the OED3: 1. An intransitive verb: “a. to make a hissing or sputtering sound. b. to move with a fizzing sound”. 2. A noun referring to effervescence, a hissing sound or a disturbance.
72 By all accounts compounds with onomatopoeias work as ASDS. They have the advantage of adding a special sound effect to the reading. However, they remain ambiguous in meaning.
73 In children’s literature, sound motivation is very important, especially when the book is likely to be read out loud and even when the sonorous occasionalisms are nonsensical.
2.2.2. Semantic occasionalisms
74 The second category of occasionalisms belongs to semantic neology when the signifier remains identical but the signified is new or modified. For J. Tournier, there are two sub-classes of semantic neology. The first one is a transposition of the grammatical class (conversion). The other one concerns metasemantic processes: metaphor, metonymy (including synecdoche), figurative meaning and euphemism.
75 With regard to the first sub-class, there are occasionalisms in my corpus which are cases of conversion. Here is an instance by R. Dahl: “the giant is fridging (‘freezing’) with cold.” As is generally the case with literary coinages, such conversions usually violate the blocking principle (also called pre-emption by synonymy). An unnecessary coinage makes it stand out in the text.
76 In children’s literature, metaphor (transfer of meaning by analogy between two different domains) or metonymy (transfer of meaning by contiguity) are as common as they would be in any other literary context. In The Poetics of Mind, R.W. Gibbs explains that figurative thought, language and understanding are deeply rooted in human cognition. “Texts are not static containers of meaning but provide the common ground for writer and reader from which meaning may arise” [Gibbs 2002: 73]. R.W. Gibbs [2002: 260] also observes that “Literary metaphors are typically rich in meaning”. Here are instances of occasionalisms from my corpus which are a case of metaphor (20) or metonymy (21):
77 In J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, the fairy Tinkerbell speaks a language referred to as tinkle:
(20) The loveliest tinkle as of golden bells answered him. It is the fairy language.
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78 In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, owls are employed by wizards to deliver letters, messages and other items. In several excerpts, owl refers to the message itself:
(21) We await your owl by no later than 31 July. […] He received an urgent owl from the Ministry of Magic and flew off for London at once.
79 However, word formations such as (20) and (21) are not detected computationally by my exclusion list, therefore my analysis shows more cases of word de-formations or word creations. With regards to metasemantic processes, potentially, all tropes – figures of speech with an unexpected twist in the meaning of the word – can be added to J. Tournier’s sub-class for the nonce formation of an occasionalism. I am only including here the tropes I encountered in my data of occasionalisms.
80 In addition to metaphor and metonymy, here are further instances of metasemy:
81 - Figurative meaning / literalisation: As W.U. Dressler states [1993: 5029], “poets often remotivate words, that is restore the original transparent meaning. This is sometimes called poetic etymology”. For instance, the etymology of butterfly is from “Old English buttorfleoge, evidently butter (n.) + fly (n.), but of obscure signification” (Etymonline). It gives poetic licence for R. Dahl to coin butteryfly. The adjunction of the suffix -y remotivates the compound butterfly.
82 - Euphemism: It is common in child language to coin a “harmless substitute” as S. Ullmann puts it [1970: 205] to avoid a taboo word. Therefore, it is not surprising that authors will use the same principle to hide offensive language in a children’s book (e.g. flushbunking for the ‘F-word’ coined by R. Dahl).
83 - Paronomasia – also called punning: It uses phonological deviance to associate homonyms. For example, R. Dahl coins human bean, an alteration of human being. This is not simply a phonological de-formation. In the book, there is an instance of humans being called half-baked beans. Since the fiction is about giants eating humans, the semantic transfer is obvious. Collocations can also be altered to create a paronomastic occasionalism (e.g. save our solos instead of ‘save our souls’).
84 - Simile: Commonly, language uses similes to describe words through comparison of their sets of meanings. Similes can be metaphorical and sometimes they are lexicalised (e.g. ‘daft as a brush’). In my corpus, I identified similes where the comparison does not clarify the meaning but makes it opaque, either by using nonsensical associations (Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky18) or by using occasionalisms (Sophie said, “would they really eat me up?” “Like a whiffswiddle!” cried the BFG.) Since tea-trays are not meant to fly and there is no clear referent for the creation whiffswiddle, the similes do not perform their role of enlightening description.
2.2.3. Morphological occasionalisms
85 The third category of occasionalisms I describe belongs to morphological neology. In contemporary English, morphological neology refers to clipping, initials and acronyms, which follow the least effort principle and as such are very productive19. In children’s
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literature, it is the opposite of the least effort principle, as the author will go through great trouble to alter the signifier, usually extending it.
2.2.3.1. Alteration of the signifier
86 There are several types of alterations in my data of occasionalisms. They can be categorised as follows:
87 - Typographical alteration: P. Pullman for instance uses symbols (e.g. the diaeresis in aërodock, aëronaut, and Nälkäinens) and characters (e.g. the ash in dæmon) which are uncommon in English. Such typographic distinction makes it clear that the coinage is not to be mistaken with attested ‘aeronaut’ or ‘demon’ and thus the occasionalism is potentially morphosemantic. When only the spelling is altered, as in R. Dahl’s “your spelling is atroshus”, there is no doubt it is only morphological.
88 - Phonological alteration: There are two types of phonological alteration: eye-dialect and distortion. The respelling of words to show a burlesque pronunciation – also called eye-dialect – results in a morphological nonce formation. This is well illustrated in this excerpt:
(22) ‘Why, a beak’s a madgst’rate; and when you walk by a beak’s order, it’s not straight forerd, but always agoing up, and niver a coming down agin. (C. Dickens, chapter 8).
89 Phonological distortion can be a case of mispronunciation for lack of mastering the language (redunculous for ‘ridiculous’, langwitch for ‘language’, gollops for ‘gulps’ 20) or due to some impairment as shown in the following excerpt:
(23) ‘Dot a shoul,’ replied Barney; whose words: whether they came from the heart or not: made their way through the nose. (C. Dickens, chapter 15).
90 - Lexical alteration: The occasionalism is either due to an unconscious mistake (malapropism, metathesis, slip of the tongue) or a stylistic feature (spoonerism). “The ludicrous misuse of words, especially in mistaking a word for another resembling it” [OED3] called malapropism is likely to lead to wordplay rather than neology: Laughing and Grief21 (‘Latin and Greek’). Metathesis describes the transposition of phonemes. For instance, Dahl coins squeakpips for ‘pipsqueaks.’ Slip of the tongue generally refers to oral speech production, when someone mistakes one word for another. Then again, the wordplay might not be neological. In literature, it can be found in dialogues:
(24) ‘Your brain is full of rotten-wool.’ ‘You mean cotton-wool.’ (R. Dahl, chapter 8).
91 Spoonerism is when the initial consonants have been inverted: catasterous disastrophe for ‘disastrous catastrophe’, bunderbluss for ‘blunderbuss.’ Collocations can also be subject to spoonerism: frack to bunt for ‘back to front’ or jipping and skumping for ‘jumping and skipping’22.
92 - Grammatical alteration: Flouting grammatical conventions is another way to create occasionalisms. I have several examples in my data concerning comparatives and superlatives.
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(25) ‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English) (L. Carroll, chapter 2).
93 According to R. Huddleston & G.K. Pullum [2014: 1584], when the base adjective has more than two syllables, they “normally allow only the analytic forms.” A footnote is added stipulating that “Lewis Carroll’s *curiouser and curiouser, involving a trisyllabic base in -ous, is ungrammatical, and was intended jocularly, or as indicating that his young heroine Alice had not quite grasped the limitations of the inflectional system yet.” However, L. Carroll is not the only author whose characters have not grasped the inflectional system. C. Dickens coined affablest and bare-facedest and J.M. Barrie wonderfuller.
94 - Lengthening: It is a formation process described by D.G. Miller [2014: 161-162] mostly as an expressive variant to express intensity. There are other types of lengthening in my data for the nonce formation of occasionalisms. All the following instances of lengthening are coined by R. Dahl. One or several phonemes can be added to a lexical unit (for that process, the term epethensis could be used). As in bag(gle)pipes, butter(y)fly, jump(s)y, shoot(l)ing, swig(gle), swim(el)ing, etc. From my data, the most commonly added phoneme in word de-formation is /l/, and it is likely to have a hypocoristic connotation. The insertion of a phoneme can have an impact on the original spelling of the lexical unit: squir(d)le for ‘squirrel’. The insertion of phonemes can make the reading more complex: aer(i)oplanes, rhino(sto)ss(t)erisses, showing that idiosyncrasy can be achieved through the phonological complexity of the occasionalism. A morpheme can also be added to the lexical unit, as in hippo(dumpling)s or ear(wig)s. The added morpheme in the two previous examples is purely recreational and I do not see it as a case of morphosemantic composition. There is an instance of morphological extension in my data where the added morpheme is a case of tmesis (the splitting of a word in autonomous parts by the insertion of a word): scrum(diddly)umptious. Again, the addition of the morpheme diddly bears no semantic charge.
95 - Word order (anastrophe) and segmentation: Inverting the word order (a scheme called anastrophe) of a collocation can form a comical phrase which can be considered as a complex occasionalism: dory-hunky for ‘hunky-dory’23. Segmentation mistakes are common for children during the acquisition of language. Such mistakes are reproduced in children’s literature (e.g. a sistance for ‘assistance’, a norphan and a norphanage for ‘orphan’ and ‘orphanage’24).
96 Most of the processes that alter a signifier are stylistic devices, known as schemes. Schemes are figures of speech that deal with word order, syntax, letters and sound, rather than meaning.
2.2.3.2. Reduplication
97 Reduplication25 is only explained by J. Tournier as a minor process [2007: 165] for the word formation of contemporary English, which he includes in sound motivated processes within morphosemantic neology. There are too many instances of reduplication in children’s literature for me not to address this process properly. Furthermore, since instances of reduplication from my data show no change of referent (e.g. crackety-crack, thingalingaling26), I listed reduplication as a case of morphological
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nonce formation. At the most, reduplication allows new connotations. Reduplication is common in children’s verses where it may be used to benefit the metric pattern. Just as children love to bounce and dance, they enjoy clapping along with nursery rhymes and find pleasure in the reliable beats of the repetitions. This might explain why occasionalisms using reduplication are frequently coined in fictional prose. Reduplication emphasizes rhythm.
98 I have identified four types of reduplication: full reduplication and cases where the reduplicant is either in the initial, internal or final position.
99 - Full reduplication: It is a nonce formation where the occasionalism is repeated twice or more: boom-boom- boom27, clink-clink28, drip-drip-drip29, etc. The full reduplicant can be part of a compound: clumpety-clumpety-clump30, telly-telly bunkum box31, drip-drip-dripping32.
100 - Alliterative reduplication (or reverse rhyme): This is the nonce formation of a compound with an initial reduplicant. Alliterative compounds do not always occur in consecutive order (ruggy little runt, shrivelly little shrimp33). Alliterative compounds can be randomly juxtaposed (whiffswiddle, pigspiffle34), hyphenated (crackety-crack, squiff-squiddled35) or separated by a typographic blank (squinky squiddler36). Both stems can be coined (grueful gruncious37) though most of the time, the compound is formed with one established stem.
101 - Rhyme reduplication: It has the same characteristics as alliterative reduplication but with a final reduplicant: thingalingaling, ucky-mucky, piggery-jokery38.
102 - There are two types of reduplication using an internal reduplicant: occasionalisms formed with assonances (wispy-misty, buzzy-hum, swizzfiggling39) or ablaut reduplication. Ablaut reduplication abides by certain rules. For two-word combinations, the stressed vowels consecutive order is + or +
2.2.4. Combined processes
103 I have endeavoured to find prototypical occurrences for each of the described processes. However, nonce formation processes are often combined with one another.
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104 I will illustrate the complexity of such processes through an example:
(26) “They would be putting me in a zoo or the bunkumhouse with all those squiggling hippodumplings and crockadowndillies.” (R. Dahl, chapter 7).
105 ‘Hippo’ is an attested apocope (also called back-clipping). ‘Dumpling’ is figuratively used to describe a small, fat person. It could be argued that hippodumpling is either a compound or an extended lexeme (resulting from a lengthening process through the addition of a morpheme). ‘Bunkhouse’ is also extended into bunkumhouse. Since there is a common element between ‘bunkhouse’ and ‘bunkum’ it could be either a blend [(BUNK)UM x (BUNK)HOUSE] or an extended lexeme. ‘Crocodiles’ are transformed into crockadowndillies. The extension of crocodiles is more complex. Crockadowndillies in the excerpt are clearly animals resembling crocodiles, though they are linked with ‘crack of dawn.’ As for ‘dillies’, the author is unlikely to refer to the American lexeme. In my opinion, ‘dillies’ is a hypocoristic y-suffixed form of ‘crocodile’. The occasionalism can be considered either as a case of complex construction (blend + affix + metaphor) or simply as an extended lexeme. In all three occasionalisms from (26), I do not believe that there is any semantic charge added to the coinages. At the most they allow new connotations, therefore, in my opinion, they are morphological occasionalisms formed through a lengthening process.
106 The typology of occasionalisms presented in this section follows J. Tournier’s matrices. The occurrences of nonce formation in this corpus are of two types: playing with the word-formation process itself or using a stylistic device to create the idiosyncrasy. Occasionalisms often combine several of these processes. Prototypically, there is one (or several) attested word(s) or phrase(s) for each coinage, reinforcing the playfulness of the occasionalism.
Conclusions
107 Coinages in literature are not meant to fill a lexical gap and enrich the lexicon but to enrich the text itself, thus they are referred to as occasionalisms – a type of nonce word – and not neologisms. A textual analysis of occasionalisms in children’s literature has enabled me to describe three types of nonce formation: word formation (from existing morphological material), word de-formation (of existing lexical units and phrases) and word creation (from scratch). The formation processes are both lexicological (as described in J. Tournier’s sub-classes) and stylistic (schemes and tropes). Thus, I consider that there is no limit to lexical creation and deviation in children’s literature.
108 In children’s literature where the fantasy and nonsense genres are prominent, it is standard practice to create occasionalisms to name entities which have no existence in the real world. The power of words in concept formation (hypostatisation) explains the overwhelming presence of coinages in fantasy-driven contexts. However, an occasionalism does not necessarily have a clear referent in the extralinguistic world. Another primary function of coinages in children’s literature is to stand out in the text. As attention-seeking devices (ASDs), they tend not to follow the least-effort principle, forcing the reader to decipher opaque occasionalisms. Words are coined to humorously stand out in an utterance. The playful impulse is the primary purpose of such lexical creations. The idiosyncrasy of occasionalisms, often long words with a puzzling
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pronunciation, always creates an effect on the reader/listener. It is the magic formula of words empowered by their complexity.
109 D. Crystal argues that “linguistic intuitions are more attuned to strangeness than we imagine” [1990: 24]. In deciphering occasionalisms, a reader/listener experiences the flexibility of language and how it can be indefinitely remodelled.
110 The function/effect of occasionalisms is crucial and a clear referent to the signifier is secondary to this function. The effect is always based on idiosyncrasy. The reader/ listener can then be surprised, amused, or just enjoy the pleasure of poetic sounds.
111 Children’s literature, where nonsense and fantasy roams free is the perfect background to playful lexical creations and recreation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BAUER Laurie, 2004, A Glossary of Morphology, Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
BAUER Laurie, 1983, English Word-formation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
CRYSTAL David, 2002 [1995], The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
CRYSTAL David, 1990, “Linguistic strangeness”, in BRIDGES Margaret (ed.), On Strangeness, Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature (SPELL) 5, Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 13-24.
DRESSLER Wolfgang U. & TUMFART Barbara, 2017, “New corpus-linguistic approaches to the investigation of poetic occasionalisms: The case of Johann Nepomuk Nestroy”, Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting 3(1), De Gruyter Open, 155-166 also available at https:// www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/yplm.2017.3.issue-1/yplm-2017-0008/ yplm-2017-0008.pdf://website.com
DRESSLER Wolfgang U., 1993, “Word-formation: Poetic license”, in ASHER R.E. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, IX, Oxford: Elsevier Pergamon, 5028-5029.
ELSEN Hilke, 2017, “The Two Meanings of Sound Symbolism”, in Open Linguistics 2017;3, 489-497, De Gruyter Open, also available at: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opli.2017.3.issue-1/ opli-2017-0024/opli-2017-0024.xml?format=INT
ETYMONLINE, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/
FLIPSEN Jr. Peter, 2006, “Syllables per word in typical and delayed speech acquisition”, Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 20 (4), 293-301, also available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/ 10.1080/02699200400024855?journalCode=iclp20
GIBBS Raymond W., 2002 [1994], The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language and Understanding, New York: Cambridge University Press.
HOHENHAUS Peter, 2007, “How to do (even more) things with nonce words (other than naming)”, in MUNAT Judith (ed.), Lexical Creativity, Texts and Contexts, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamin, 15-38.
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HUDDLESTON Rodney & PULLUM Geoffrey K., 2014 [2002], The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
LECERCLE Jean-Jacques, 1994, Philosophy of Nonsense: The Intuitions of Victorian Nonsense Literature, London & New York: Routledge.
LEECH Geoffrey N. & SHORT Mick, 2007 [1981], Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose, vol. 13, Harlow: Pearson Education.
LESNIK-OBERSTEIN Karin, 2002 [1999], “What is children’s literature? What is childhood?”, in HUNT Peter (ed.), Understanding Children’s Literature, London and New York: Routledge, 15-29.
MERRIAM-WEBSTER, Inc, ed., 1991, The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories, Merriam-Webster.
MILLER D. Gary, 2014, English Lexicogenesis, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MUNAT Judith, 2007, “Lexical Creativity as a Marker of Style”, in MUNAT Judith (ed.), Lexical Creativity, Texts and Contexts, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamin, 163-185.
OED ONLINE, 2018, Oxford University Press available at http://www.oed.com/
PASCUA FEBLES Isabel, 2006, “Translating cultural references: The language of young people in literary texts”, in VAN COILE Jan & VERSCHUEREN Walter P. (eds.), Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and strategies, London & New York: Routledge, 111-122.
PRUVOST Jean & SABLAYROLLES Jean-François, 2012 [2003], Les néologismes, Paris: Que sais-je ? Presses Universitaires de France.
RENNER Vincent, 2015, “Lexical blending as wordplay”, in ZIRKER Angelica & WINTER-FROEMEL Esme (eds.), Wordplay and Metalinguistic / Metadiscursive Reflection: Authors, contexts, techniques and meta- reflection (Vol. 1), Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter, 119-133.
SABLAYROLLES Jean-François, 2000, La néologie en français contemporain : Examen du concept et analyse de productions néologiques récentes, Paris: Honoré Champion.
SCHMID Hans-Jörg, 2011 [2005], English Morphology and word-formation: An introduction, Berlin: Erich Schmidt.
ŠTEKAUER Pavol, 2000, English Word-formation: A history of research (1960-1995), Tübingen: Narr.
TOURNIER Jean, 2007 [1985], Introduction descriptive à la lexicogénétique de l’anglais contemporain, Genève: Slatkine Erudition.
ULLMANN Stephen, 1970 [1962], Semantics: An Introduction to the Science of Meaning, Oxford: Blackwell.
Corpus
BARRIE James Matthew, 1911, Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy), Project Gutenberg available at https:// www.gutenberg.org/files/16/16-0.txt
CARROLL Lewis, 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Project Gutenberg available at http:// www.gutenberg.org/files/11/11-0.txt
DAHL Roald, 1982, The BFG, London: Jonathan Cape.
DICKENS Charles, 1837, Oliver Twist or The Parish Boy’s Progress, Project Gutenberg available at http:// www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/730/pg730.txt
KIPLING Rudyard, 1894, The Jungle Book, Project Gutenberg available at http://www.gutenberg.org/ files/236/236-0.txt
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LEWIS Clive Staple, [1950], The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, available at http://www.e- reading.club/bookreader.php/71014/Lewis_-_The_Lion%2C_the_Witch_and_the_Wardrobe.html
MILLIGAN Spike, 1999, A Children’s Treasury of Milligan, London: Virgin Publishing Limited.
PULLMAN Philip, [1995], Northern Lights: His Dark Materials 1, Kindle ebook, Amazon. available at https://www.amazon.com/Northern-Lights-His-Dark-Materials-ebook/dp/B00SSJYFAQ/ ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1525691579&sr=1-2&keywords=northern+lights+pullman
ROWLING Joanne K., [1997], Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Kindle ebook, Amazon. available at https://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Philosophers-Stone-Rowling-ebook/dp/B019PIOJYU/ ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1525691635&sr=1-3&keywords=jk+rowling+harry+potter
STEVENSON Robert Louis, 1882, Treasure Island, Project Gutenberg available at http:// www.gutenberg.org/files/120/120-0.txt
TOLKIEN John Ronald Reuel, 1937, The Hobbit, available at https://ia800302.us.archive.org/2/items/ TheHobbitCollectionJRRTolkien/The%20Hobbit%20Collection%20-%20JRR%20Tolkien.pdf
NOTES
1. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/the-hobbit 2. http://www.lefigaro.fr/livres/2012/11/12/03005-20121112ARTFIG00345--the-hobbit-un-livre- destine-aux-enfants.php 3. Ranking at FNAC in 2018. 4. e.g. the villainous Jew representation in Oliver Twist. 5. Wordlist of 58,000 words available online: http://www.mieliestronk.com/wordlist.html 6. https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/05/20/philip-pullman-language-his-dark- materials/ 7. Coined by Dahl. 8. Coined by Dahl. 9. Coined by Dahl. 10. Schnozz is a slang term for nose. 11. Leech & Short [2007: 22-23] present a classification of novelists by A. Burgess who identifies two types. A “Class 1” novelist “whose work language is a zero quality, transparent, unseductive, the overtones of connotation and ambiguity totally damped;” and a “Class 2” novelist for whom “ambiguities, puns and centrifugal connotations are to be enjoyed rather than regretted, and whose books, made out of words as much as characters and incidents, lose a great deal when adapted to a visual medium”. 12. Coined by Dahl. 13. Coined by Carroll. 14. Coined by Kipling. 15. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-from-nahuatl-the-language-of- the-aztecs/chocolate 16. “Back-formation is the formation of a word by the deletion of material which either is or appears to be an affix.” Bauer [2004: 21]. 17. Kidsnatched is probably a blend of kidnapped and cradle snatched. 18. Coined by Carroll. 19. Statistics available in Tournier [1985] [2007: 312]. 20. Coined by Dahl. 21. Coined by Carroll.
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22. Coined by Dahl. 23. With longer phrases such as every then and now for ‘every now and then’ or less or more instead of ‘more or less’ the analysis level is probably less lexical and more syntactic (examples coined by Dahl). 24. Coined by Dahl. 25. Reduplication is a recognised word formation process in other typologies. See Schmid [2011: 221-222] where reduplication is listed as a non-morphemic word formation process. 26. Coined by Dahl. 27. Coined by Dahl. 28. Coined by Tolkien. 29. Coined by Lewis. 30. Coined by Dahl. 31. Coined by Dahl. 32. Coined by Tolkien. 33. Coined by Dahl. 34. Coined by Dahl. 35. Coined by Dahl. 36. Coined by Dahl. 37. Coined by Dahl. 38. Coined by Dahl. 39. Coined by Dahl. 40. Example from Tolkien. 41. Example from Stevenson.
ABSTRACTS
In literature, writers have the liberty to deviate from linguistic norms under a principle known as poetic license. Poetic license allows deviation in favour of making language inspiring. Deviation from linguistic norms often implies that writers can take liberties with word formation, thus neology in literary contexts should be addressed specifically. This article analyses the status of literary coinages in the scope of neology and describes the specific context of children’s literature. The article also offers a typology of nonce formation processes for occasionalisms, with textual analysis, from a corpus of children’s books, using J. Tournier’s matrices of lexicogenesis [2007: 51].
En littérature, tout/e auteur/e peut enfreindre les normes linguistiques selon un principe appelé la licence poétique. La déviance est ainsi tolérée dès lors qu’elle sublime le texte. Cette déviance aux normes engendre souvent des créations lexicales audacieuses, et c’est pour cela que la néologie littéraire doit être étudiée dans son contexte spécifique. Le présent article analyse le statut des néologismes littéraires dans le cadre de la néologie et décrit les spécificités de la littérature pour la jeunesse. L’article propose une typologie des procédés de (ré)création lexicale des occasionnalismes, selon les matrices lexicogéniques de J. Tournier [2007 : 51], avec une analyse d’occurrences extraites d’un corpus de livres pour la jeunesse.
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INDEX
Mots-clés: occasionnalisme, création lexicale, création ex nihilo, hypostatisation, fonction d’appel, littérature pour la jeunesse Keywords: occasionalism, word formation, word creation, hypostatisation, attention-seeking device, children’s literature
AUTHOR
CÉCILE POIX Lyon 2 University [email protected]
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The Neological Functions of Disease Euphemisms in English and French: Verbal Hygiene or Speech Pathology?
Denis Jamet
Euphemisms are embedded so deeply in our language that few of us, even those who pride themselves on being plain speakers, ever get through a day without using them. [Rawson 1981: 1] As politeness increases, some expressions will be considered too gross and vulgar for the delicate. [Preface to Samuel Johnson’s 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language]
Introduction
1 “Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place”: this quotation from American writer and cancer survivor Susan Sontag [1990: 3] shows that diseases and illnesses are commonly associated with decay, loss of control and the fear of death, three notions generally linked to taboo language. Every human being will – one day or another, and despite medical improvements and the ever-increasing development of new cures – experience some sort of brief or prolonged, benign or life-threatening affliction, and it is therefore interesting to examine what type of lexis speakers resort to when confronted with the terrifying reality that they are to come to terms with either for their own illness or that of a loved one. As Allan & Burridge [2006: 203] write,
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“our discussion [will be] about the way people use language when expressing the emotional and social aspects of disease.” The taboo surrounding illness is double – or triple – as it relies on the fear of mortality and identity loss, the shame surrounding bodily functions, and sex in the case of sexually-transmitted diseases. We will see that the taboo translates linguistically through an extensive use of euphemisms and dysphemisms in everyday vernacular, in public health campaigns as well as in private discourses, and that the language of diseases is rich with euphemisms and dysphemisms. Just think of the phrase healthcare in English, or services de santé in French; if no attention is paid, it may go unnoticed that the very notion of disease has completely disappeared from the negatively-connoted expressions they are substituted to – respectively medical treatment and soins médicaux – to leave room to the nouns health and santé, which are positively connoted. Think of mad house / mental hospital / (insane) asylum / looney bin in English or asile de fous / asile d’aliénés / asile de cinglés in French, which respectively became mental health institution / mental home / sanatorium / sanitarium in English and hôpital psy(chiatrique) / HP / sanatorium in French. Consciously or unconsciously, we all tend to sugar-coat unpleasant reality with sweet-talking techniques, a.k.a. euphemisms.
2 At the same time, and quite paradoxically, it is fair to say that the role of taboo and taboo language in the creation, evolution and expansion of the French and English lexicon is barely mentioned in studies on the reasons and motivations of lexical change and expansion1, a fact clearly stated for English by Kate Burridge: Taboos, whether they be the so-called absolute taboos of Austronesia or the social taste constraints of Western-style taboos, are an enormously important force behind language change through (1) word loss (2) meaning shift of terms already in the language (via metaphor, general-for-specific, internal borrowing and so on), (3) deliberate modification of existing terms, (4) external borrowing. Word tabooing processes act as some kind of linguistic wild card and militate against the operation of regular predictable change [Burridge 2012] (emphasis is mine).
3 This article therefore intends to assess the actual role and function of taboo and taboo language – and more particularly the role of euphemisms and dysphemisms, as they are closely linked to taboos and taboo language – in neology, more particularly in the lexicon used to talk about diseases and illnesses in English and French. To do so, I will rely on the theoretical paradigms of Intercultural Pragmatics and Politeness- Impoliteness research, and mostly draw from Allan & Burridge [1991] and Allan & Burridge [2006] by mentioning their pivotal study on euphemisms and dysphemisms. To illustrate my point, I will resort to the taboo language used to refer to diseases and illnesses in English and French. My corpus – or rather set of data – used to refer to physical and mental illness is composed of lexemes and phrases used to refer to diseases and illness, directly or indirectly. The lexical occurrences were retrieved from a variety of sources, such as Internet blogs, web sites, everyday conversations (in everyday life, on TV, on the radio, etc.) as well as dictionaries and corpora such as the Corpus of Contemporary American English and Sketch Engine. The article will start with a discursive presentation of how speakers use language to euphemize in discourse, to lead to an analysis based on the code, when the ad-hoc euphemistic discursive occurrences are eventually integrated into the language as neologisms per se.
4 In the first part (Key concepts: neologism, taboo, taboo language, euphemism, dysphemism and orthophemism), I will briefly define key concepts, such as “neologism”, “taboo”, “taboo language”, “euphemism”, “dysphemism” and “orthophemism”; then,
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in the second part (Verbal Hygiene: why is disease and illness a taboo and how do euphemisms (and dysphemisms) help us cope with the taboo?), I will try and understand why diseases and illnesses were and are indeed still tabooed nowadays and why they give rise to a rich taboo language in French and English; I will also show that many names of diseases were originally euphemistic – all the more as they were lethal and/or associated with moral depravity or sex – but paradoxically, the more euphemistic the expression is to start off with, the more likely it is to give way to negatively-connoted, dysphemistic expressions, mostly metaphors (see Sontag [1990]). I will finally try and show in the third and concluding part why and how taboo language participates in the lexical expansion of French and English (What’s in a name? (Re)inventing illness and disease through euphemistic language), where I will reflect on the various word- formation processes used to generate the taboo language used to refer to physical and mental illnesses in French and English.
1. Key concepts: neologism, taboo, taboo language, euphemism, dysphemism and orthophemism
5 Expanding the lexicon through neology is a frequent, never-ending phenomenon necessary for any language to evolve and be a relevant means of talking about the surrounding world. Following the tenets and previous works of Cognitive Linguistics (see Fauconnier [2002 (1997)], Katz, Cacciari, Gibbs & Turner [1998], Kövecses [2002], Lakoff [1987], Lakoff & Johnson [1980], Langacker [1987], Sweetser [1990], to name but a few) I postulate that language is the tool used to organize our perception of the world, and therefore to make sense of it through language, more than a mere device enabling human beings to talk about the surrounding world. More than mere labels stuck to objects, people or notions, words are representations of the world, and of the way we conceive the world we live in, and are a means of making sense of it. Words have to be understood as snapshots of society, or rather as snapshots of the way we think of society. The creation of new lexemes or phrases – referred to as “neologisms” – is the main way of expanding the lexicon in any language. A neologism is generally defined as a new lexeme or phrase entering a given language, or a new meaning taken by an existing lexeme or phrase in a given language.
6 Many linguists have proposed their own typology to classify word-formation processes (such as Bauer [1993 (1983)], [1994 (1988)], Lipka [1990], Plag [2003] or Tournier [1985], [1991a], [1991b], to name but a few, but the role of taboo language is rarely acknowledged in lexical creation and expansion. Before giving a few examples to illustrate my point, I want to give a brief definition of “taboo”, borrowed from Allan & Burridge: Taboo is a proscription of behaviour that affects everyday life. […] Taboos arise out of social constraints on the individual’s behaviour where it can cause discomfort, harm or injury. [Allan & Burridge 2006: 1]
7 The term “taboo” was supposedly coined by Captain Cook, during his 3rd voyage around the world in 1784. The term, borrowed from the Polynesian language Tongan, denoted “prohibited behavior” and applied to “all cases where things are not to be touched.” Even if there is no such thing as an absolute taboo, all societies have taboos, and speakers constantly censor the language they use to avoid mentioning them. Burridge
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[2004: 199] defines the word “taboo” as something “revolting, untouchable, filthy, unmentionable, dangerous, disturbing, thrilling – but above all powerful”; as we will see, all these adjectives can, one way or another, be applied to diseases and illnesses.
8 If we come back to the link between neology and taboo language, it has been shown that the noun bear in English originally meant “the brown one”, or that the noun medved in Russian originally meant “honey-eater”, because people thought that uttering the name of the animal would cause its appearance; the role of taboo language is generally only studied by historical linguistics and restricted to taboo language linked to superstition or religion. Yet, with examples borrowed from English and French, I would like to show that even in our contemporary western societies, taboo language is a powerful – even if often unrecognized – force – among others – to expand the lexicon, as Keyes clearly states: Originally meant to avoid blasphemy and be polite, euphemisms are now just as likely to be a tool of cover-up and obfuscation […]. Because what makes us uncomfortable changes with the times, there is a constant demand for new euphemisms [Keyes 2010: 12]. (E)uphemisms speak to concerns of their time […]. The words we use and those we avoid illustrate what we care about most deeply. Euphemisms are the press secretary of values [Keyes 2010: 210-211].
9 Even if there is no such thing as euphemism or dysphemism as a word-formation process in French or English, taboo language – i.e. the language used to talk about taboos or to avoid mentioning taboos – plays a major role in expanding the lexicon, since it resorts to existing word-formation processes, as the third part of the article will illustrate. Lexemes such as cemetery – from the Greek word for “sleeping place” –, or obituaries – from Latin obitus, “departure, a going to meet, encounter” –, were initially euphemisms for more ominous lexemes (graveyard and death notices respectively). “Like ‘cemetery,’ a notable number of today’s everyday lexemes began as euphemisms” [Keyes 2010: 13]. Taboos are therefore the powerhouse of the euphemism industry, and, as indicated by Mc Donald [1988: vi], “[e]uphemism is the inevitable partner of taboo”.
10 Yet, the motivation behind the expansion of the lexicon and the creation of neologisms cannot be restricted to mere taboos, and other cognitive motivations such as psychological, sociological or linguistic reasons also account for the emergence of neologisms: lexical gap to be filled in, change in the vision of a given referent or notion, desire to play with the language (be humorous, feeling of in-groupness, etc.), and so on, as we will see below. Taboo language can be seen as one of the many reasons behind the expansion of the lexicon for realities or referents we feel uncomfortable with, while the various word-formation processes – be they morphological processes such as affixation, compounding, shortening, etc., or mechanisms of lexical innovation such as metaphor, metonymy, borrowing, etc. – are mere tools to generate it: The primary social value of euphemisms is that they make it possible to discuss touchy topics while pretending we’re talking about something else [Keyes 2010: 229].
11 I will illustrate my point with euphemisms and dysphemisms used to refer to diseases and illnesses. If early euphemisms were initially a means to avoid being blasphemous, they quickly became means to avoid impropriety, especially in the prelude to the Victorian era followed by the nineteenth century2 (for a detailed study of the links between the original taboos and euphemism, see Allan & Burridge [2006: 1-28], Reyes [2010: 29-53], etc.). Consequently, “(a)s language grew more ‘refined,’ entire new areas
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of discourse became candidates for verbal evasion” [Keyes 2010: 41]. Some of the examples I use in this article are clearly not lexicalized, and are more ad-hoc discursive occurrences than real neologisms, but some of them managed to make their way through and are recorded in dictionaries of contemporary English (such as the Merriam- Webster Dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, etc.) or contemporary French (such as le Larousse, le Robert, etc.), be they as lexical entries or lemmas or only as citational uses or expressions given within other entries. What I will try to show in this article is that the evolution of society has an impact on the expansion of the lexicon, and that taboo language has a role to play in the neological creation and expansion of the lexicon, even if the degree of lexicalization of the lexemes and phrases used in French and English to refer to diseases and illnesses will vary – and consequently their degree of “neologicity”.
12 Taboo language can be linguistically realized by “euphemisms” (i.e. sweet talking), “dysphemisms” (i.e. offensive talking) or “orthophemisms” (i.e. straight talking); the three terms form what is referred to as “X‑phemisms” by Allan & Burridge [1991] and Allan & Burridge [2006]. The term “euphemism” can be defined as follows: A euphemism is used as an alternative to a dispreferred expression, in order to avoid possible loss of face: either one’s own face or, through giving offence, that of the audience, or some third party [Allan & Burridge 1991: 11] (emphasis in the original text).
13 The word “alternative” seems to imply that there is always a choice for speakers, according to the situation of utterance, the interlocutor(s), the register, etc. A euphemism is generally considered to be a way to soften down, to sugar-coat a reality or referent deemed too unpleasant, harsh, coarse or difficult to accept by resorting to a softer version, as noted by Kany: (Euphemisms are) the means by which a disagreeable, offensive or fear-instilling matter is designated with an indirect or softer term. Euphemisms satisfy a linguistic need. For his own sake as well as that of his hearers, a speaker constantly resorts to euphemisms in order to disguise an unpleasant truth, veil an offence, palliate indecency [Kany 1960: V].
14 The word “euphemism” comes from Greek euphèmismos, which is itself derived from the adjective euphèmos, “of good omen” (from eu, ‘good’, and phèmi, ‘I say’). A euphemism linguistically consists in replacing the original signifier, perceived as being offensive or unpleasant by another signifier, perceived as softer, politer, and less offensive or derogatory. According to Keyes [2010: 4], “[u]sing euphemisms is the verbal equivalent of draping nude statues. Doing so substitutes unthreatening words for one that makes us fidget”. I refer to euphemisms as “veils” or “shrouds” [Jamet 2010] thrown over the signified, as if to conceal it, but linguists have come up with a myriad of terms to refer to them: deodorant of language [Adams 1985: 48], deodorizing spray and perfume [Allan & Burridge 1991: 25], social lubricant, shield [Allan & Burridge 1991: 3], diplomatic cologne [Crisp 1984], comfort words [Keyes 2010: 6], diplomatic language [Keyes 2010: 6], linguistic fig-leaves [Rawson 1981], verbal evasions [Keyes 2010: 4], verbal camouflage [Keyes 2010: 194], linguistic Prozac [Keyes 2010: 198], oblique language [Keyes 2010: 31], etc. Each of those terms highlights a specific aspect of euphemisms: for example, the term social lubricant focuses on the social function played by euphemisms, which can only be generated and thrive in a given social context, when the term comfort words rather emphasizes the relationship between the locutor and the interlocutor.
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Euphemisms are therefore generally considered “Face Flattering Acts” (see Brown & Levinson [1987]) and do their best not to call a spade a spade.
15 “Dysphemisms” are the opposites of “euphemisms”, and therefore refer to dirty words, insults, derogatory, harsh or impolite words, and they are consequently considered “Face Threatening Acts” (see Brown & Levinson [1987]); they can be defined as follows: A dysphemism is an expression with connotations that are offensive either about the denotatum or to the audience, or both, and it is substituted for a neutral or euphemistic expression for just that reason [Allan & Burridge 1991: 26] (emphasis in the original text).
16 In 1987, Brown & Levinson proposed a “politeness model” based on the previous works of Erving Goffman [1955] and Paul Grice [1975], respectively including the notion of “face”, and the concept of “conversational logic”. Here is how Goffman defined the notion of ‘face’: The term face may be defined as the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. Face is an image of self, delineated in terms of approved social attributes [Goffman 1955: 213].
17 This concept can be subdivided into two different types of face: the positive face, which consists mainly in the desire to be accepted by others, and the negative face, the need to be left alone and have one’s actions unimpeded by others. Brown & Levinson have stressed that “face” is a universal concept: [I]t is intuitively the case that certain kinds of acts intrinsically threaten face, namely those acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the address and/or of the speaker. By ‘act’ we have in mind what is intended to be done by a verbal or non-verbal communication, just as one or more ‘speech acts’ can be assigned to an utterance [Brown & Levinson 1987: 65].
18 Brown & Levinson [1987] constructed their model on the premise that most of what is expressed in conversations presents a threat to the addressee’s face. The notion of face, positive or negative, is therefore something that everyone is trying to protect and maintain, thanks to, among many other linguistics strategies, euphemisms and dysphemisms.
19 Interestingly, Allan & Burridge [1991] or [2006] do not offer a definition for “ orthophemism”, probably because the term refers to the unmarked, i.e. neutral form, when “euphemism” and “dysphemism” correspond to the marked forms, with a specific intention and added effect in most cases. As far as denotation is concerned, there is not much difference between a euphemism, a dysphemism and an orthophemism, because what differs are the connotations (generally neutral for an orthophemism, negative and/or humorous for a dysphemism, and positive for a euphemism). This phenomenon is referred to as “cross-varietal synonymy” by Allan & Burridge: The notion that different varieties of a language use different terms, with the same or substantially the same denotation, has been called cross-varietal synonymy. […] Cross-varietal synonyms share the same denotation but differ in connotation [Allan & Burridge 2006: 46].
20 The choice between a euphemism, a dysphemism or an orthophemism will consequently entirely depend on the speaker’s point of view, and a given lexeme or
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phrase can be labelled “euphemism”, “dysphemism” or “orthophemism” only in a given context; even in a specific context, some people will view such lexeme or phrase as a “dysphemism”, when others will perceive it as a “euphemism”, depending on the conditions of use, the intention of the speaker, his or her relation with the interlocutor, etc. Labelling any lexeme or phrase orthophemistic, euphemistic or dysphemistic will therefore depend on the context in which the lexeme or phrase is used, and the intention of the speaker. Orthophemisms, euphemisms and dysphemisms are thus context-dependent, and not properties attached to a given lexeme or phrase, as clearly stated by Allan & Burridge, who point out the discursive dimension of euphemisms and dysphemisms: Like euphemism, dysphemism is not necessarily a property of the word itself, but of the way it is used [Allan & Burridge 2006: 51].
21 The perception of the neutral, respectful or offensive nature is indeed sometimes difficult to assess and varies depending on the context of use (whether the term is used between close friends, between patients and doctors, between doctors, etc.). The perception of a given euphemism or dysphemism is therefore “context-dependent”, which is coherent with the so-called “euphemism treadmill”, a term coined by Pinker [2002]. In this process, neutral terms gradually become dysphemistic over time. Those dysphemisms are replaced by euphemisms, which later become orthophemisms. In other words, the “euphemism treadmill”, also known as the “euphemism carousel”, refers to the fact that euphemisms lose their protective power, that bad connotations drive out good connotations, leading to a pejoration or contamination of euphemisms (a.k.a. the Allan-Burridge Law of Semantic Change, see Allan & Burridge [2006: 243-244]) and to the routinization of euphemisms, as mentioned by Mc Donald [1988: vi]: As they do so fresh euphemisms are introduced to take their places. Soon the process affects these new terms and they are displaced in turn. The inevitable life cycle of these words is as follows: euphemism, popular English, colloquialism, vulgarism, obscenity.
22 The following quote by Keyes clearly exemplifies this phenomenon: “I used to think I was poor before I went to the welfare office. Then I learned I wasn’t ‘poor,’ I was ‘needy.’ Then it became self-defeating to think I was needy, so they said I was ‘culturally deprived.’ Then ‘deprived’ became a bad word, and I was ‘ underprivileged.’ Shortly afterward, instead of ‘underprivileged,’ I was told to think of myself as ‘disadvantaged.’ I am still poor, but my vocabulary has improved.” [Keyes 2010: 221] (emphasis is mine).
23 We can attempt to retrace this euphemism treadmill for terms related to “disability” in English: the presumed original orthophemisms lame and crippled took on degrading connotations and could not be used to refer to people unable to walk normally. They were replaced by handicapped and then by disabled, which then evolved in the same way as the previous expressions. They have now given way to euphemisms such as physically challenged, differently abled, or lately to people with disabilities. The same goes for a word I mentioned in the introduction: asylum / asile originally meant “place of refuge, retreat”, and was therefore positively connoted (see political asylum / asile politique); yet, its frequent combination with lunatic / de fous led to a pejoration of the euphemism, which became a dysphemism (see Allan & Burridge [1991: 188-189]). This accounts for the fact that most euphemisms are short-lived and quickly become orthophemisms or dysphemisms, as the taboo they try to silence seems to contaminate them.
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24 We will now see why, despite medical improvements and the ever-increasing development of new cures, illnesses and diseases are still very much tabooed in French and English, and how euphemisms act as “verbal hygiene” to help us cope with the taboo.
2. Verbal Hygiene: why is disease and illness a taboo and how do euphemisms (and dysphemisms) help us cope with the taboo?
2.1. Brief etymological account of the words “disease”, “illness”, “sickness” and “maladie”
25 Euphemisms are essential in conserving implicit laws of decency and social decorum when mentioning disease and illness, as the latter are often shrouded in unease and secrecy. Indeed, who has never thought twice about the proper language to use when talking about a given disease to someone who must live with it on a daily basis? What, then, is so shameful about having a disease, be it curable or not, and talking about it?
26 Let us first have a look at the existing words in English and French and at their etymology. Various words can be found in English: “disease”, “illness” and “sickness”, when only one word “maladie” is generally used in French3.
27 The origin of the word “illness” is revealing, as it highlights the malevolent nature of the condition: it is composed of the adjective ill (“morally evil; offensive, objectionable”, according to etymonline.com) + the nominal suffix -ness. “Sickness” is the combination of the adjective sick (“unwell”, Old English seoc “ill, diseased, feeble, weak; corrupt; sad, troubled, deeply affected”, from Proto-Germanic *seukaz, of uncertain origin) + the nominal suffix -ness. The term “disease”, often used originally for infectious diseases, is defined by the Dorlands Illustrated Medical Dictionary [1994] as “a definite pathological process [i.e. changes in body tissues and organs] having a characteristic set of signs and symptoms.” Diseases are therefore dysfunctions of the human body; they cause discomfort, uneasiness and pain and may even lead to death. Likewise, Allan and Burridge [2006: 203] define diseases as “accidents” or “happenings” of the body, in the sense of something happening randomly (cf. by accident). The word “disease” itself used to be a euphemism. It comes from dis “cease” and ease “be comfortable”. The same goes for French, and the etymologies of the words malade and maladie are revealing: malade comes from Latin male habitus (literally mal portant i.e. in bad health), but the initial words to refer to malade and maladie were Latin morbus (mal, maladie, but also dépravation, débauche, vice) and Latin aeger (malade, fatigue, triste, affligé). The word morbus first disappeared, because it sounded too much like mors (death, corpse) and was replaced by words such as infirmitas, languor, valetudo; the word aeger was also replaced by the following euphemisms: infirmus, gravis, languidus. Then, the euphemism male habitus came with vulgar Latin, giving malade and maladie in French. As a result of that, talking about diseases is never an easy thing, and speakers usually resort to euphemisms. It is interesting to note that today another euphemism seems on its way in English, as we sometimes talk about “discomfort” or “condition” instead of “disease”, and even in French when we talk of un (petit / léger / grave) problème / souci / ennui de santé instead of une maladie. There is thus evidence to suggest that the relation
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between euphemism and the vast array of pathological medical conditions referred to as disease go a long way, all the more as diseases are at the crossroads of various taboo domains: body, death and sex. Depending on the type of disease, the taboo domain will vary. For instance, the taboo around venereal diseases is not a taboo about death, like cancer, but a taboo about sex.
28 It is now necessary to determine why there is a taboo on diseases. Why do we need euphemisms when talking about diseases? Why is there a need for disease euphemisms? What indirect means do we use to talk about diseases? Which specific diseases are tabooed? Which euphemisms do we use to talk about diseases? Why do we use disease euphemisms if proper scientific terms have been thought of?
29 The topic of disease is tabooed and this affects the language used to talk about it: a disease is a threat, and euphemism reduces or softens a word that is potentially a threat. Although there will probably always be euphemisms used to mention diseases or the ill, the reasons why it is so vary considerably according to time periods.
2.2. Brief historical account of the taboo (physical and mental illness)
30 Disease has always been feared, and as Allan & Burridge [2006: 2014] write, “[a]s any narrative history of medicine reveals, fear and superstition have always been attached to disease.” Even nowadays, people have always been afraid of contamination by an unknown disease, and the taboo around contamination is one of the main powerhouses of the creation of disease euphemisms. Fear and superstition can indeed be considered the two keywords in the never-ending history of the taboo on disease, as they conditioned the names of diseases, which changed through time, as the perception of diseases varied from one period to another, as Sontag [1990: 43] recalls: For the Greeks, disease could be gratuitous or it could be deserved (for a personal fault, a collective transgression, or a crime of one’s ancestors). With the advent of Christianity, which imposed more moralized notions of disease, as of everything else, a closer fit between disease and “victim” gradually evolved.
31 In the Middle Ages, people believed that the mere fact of naming the disease would cause it to strike, hence the magic, supernatural power attributed to disease, especially mental illness, as Allan & Burridge [1991: 175] reckon: “people suffering from mental disorders were especially feared […] madness was linked with the supernatural world and the insane were feared and shunned much like lepers”. Epidemics were seen as divine retribution against sinners, which explains why many diseases contain the word “evil”: the foul evil (pox), the falling evil (epilepsy), king’s evil (scrofula) (Allan & Burridge [2006: 205]); as a consequence, many diseases were given Christian names, as they were associated to the saints who knew how to cure them. As Allan & Burridge [1991: 180] write: “As the study of disease in the Middle Ages shows, where there is fear and ignorance, there is generally euphemism”4. Let us focus on two specific examples to illustrate our point, syphilis and leprosy.
32 Syphilis – whose euphemistic origin is worth noting: from Syphylis, a shepherd suffering from the disease (Allan & Burridge [2006: 207]) – was a much-tabooed disease, especially because of its sexual origins, and the moral depravity it was supposed to cause, hence the euphemism cupid’s measles. It was usual for people to blame the foreigners for the sexual deviance it supposedly came from, hence names such as
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Spanish needle, Spanish pox, Spanish pip, Spanish gout, the disease of Naples, Naples canker, then in the 18th century the malady of France, French pox, French disease, French aches, French fever, French malady, French gout, and French marbles. You were Frenchified if struck by syphilis and knocked with a French faggot if your nose had been destroyed by syphilis (Allan & Burridge [2006: 206-207]).
33 Leprosy was also a much-tabooed disease associated with lust and sexual misdemeanors, and was seen as a punishment from God, as “the horrible disfigurement of lepers was felt to reflect an inner corruption and mental derangement” [Allan & Burridge 2006: 208].
34 The impressive technical breakthroughs of medicine in the 20th century established more reliable knowledge about the causes of various diseases and illnesses and rendered a many unfounded beliefs and superstitions of the past obsolete. Or did they? Indeed, diseases and illnesses are still tabooed nowadays for two main reasons: • Because they can be lethal: cancer, AIDS, etc. • Because they imply fear5 (see scared to death, worried sick / mort de peur, malade d’inquiétude), ignorance, and lack of control6 (see lose one’s mind / perdre la tête), which gives rise to a myriad of euphemisms, all the more so for the diseases implying loss of control (Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, etc.).
35 Some of today’s most serious diseases – especially those associated with death or degeneracy, such as cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer’s – are still much-tabooed and resort to various euphemisms. Indeed, with diseases, there are many reasons why one would prefer to use a euphemism: • Not to mention the name of the disease for superstition-related reasons, • Not to make someone uncomfortable when mentioning their condition, • Not to impose one’s condition on others when mentioning one’s own condition, etc.
36 Let us conclude this part with a few words on mental illness; Allan & Burridge [1991: 186-187] make it clear that mental illness is somewhat different from physical illness and more difficult to apprehend: [M]ental illness still has a great deal of mystery to it. For one, it is nowhere near as easy to define as physical illness. The term covers an enormous assortment of conditions, ranging from mildly eccentric or neurotic behavior, to severe psychotic disorders where a patient might lose total contact with reality (as in the case of severe schizophrenia, for example). To the layperson who lumps all these together as insanity, the picture is indeed a confusing one. When is nonnormal behavior to be considered an illness? When is behavioral deviance considered problematic? As in most cases of stigmatizing illnesses, the origins of mental illness are usually mysterious. […] Mental illness is viewed not so much as a disease, but more as a moral failure.
37 Just like physical illness, mental illness is linked to fear and superstition, as well as lack of control: “the fear of becoming insane is one of the most common of fears felt by normal people, taking equal place with those of cancer and death” [Gillis 1972: 177]. It is still much-tabooed, as the causes of mental illness remain mysterious, and people suffering from it are feared for that reason. Allan & Burridge [2006: 216] retrace the origins of the expressions we use to refer to mental illness, and link them to the notion of flaw, deficiency: The stereotypical mental patient as someone ‘flawed, deficient’ […] is the basis for many other dysphemistic expressions for madness: crack-brained, scatter-brained, shatter-brained; head-case; falling to pieces; unhinged; having a screw/tile/slate loose;
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kangaroos in the top paddock; one brick short of load; not playing with a full deck; three cards short of a full deck; one sandwich short of a picnic; two cans short of a six-pack; two bob short of a quid; not the full quid; a shingle short; a shrub short of a herbaceous border; and perhaps he’s lost his marbles.
38 The examples quoted by Alan & Burridge are recorded in dictionaries and are therefore lexicalized; they belong to the linguistic code, and are not mere discursive occurrences but examples of disease neologisms. Obviously, there exist many other euphemisms or dysphemisms to refer to mental illness in all its forms, such as touched, chrétien (a Swiss French euphemism, different from but related to the English dysphemism cretin), deranged / dérangé/e (from “disturb”, “disarrange”, “disorder”), s ick / malade in expressions such as “Are you sick? / T’es malade? Tu vas pas bien ?”), mental (the adjective came to mean “insane”, “mad” – insane being a euphemism for mad, which exhibits the pejoration of euphemisms), manquer de cuisson, etc.
39 In a way, euphemisms can be seen as a form of “verbal control” in the face of illness, to protect oneself from “infected language” and to put a “healthy distance” with the illness. Euphemisms intend to “quarantine” the dangerous sides of diseases, by resorting to other terms to refer to something perceived as threatening and/or embarrassing.
40 Even if diseases most of the time strike randomly, the very term conveys negative connotations, as previously mentioned with the etymologies of the words disease, illness and malade / maladie. Even if you think about the terms related to disease, these are also negatively connoted: patient, sufferer, victim in English, and patient/e, victim, personne atteinte de… The referents are in all cases seen as passive and seem to just put up with the situation without acting at all. Let us now examine why some diseases are more tabooed than others, and how their very names are used dysphemistically and lead to the creation of semantic neologisms.
2.3. Why are some diseases more tabooed than others, and how come their names can be used dysphemistically?
41 Following Firth’s famous principle, “You shall know a word by the company it keeps” [Firth 1957: 179], I now want to show that, interestingly, the names of many common diseases were originally euphemistic – all the more as they were lethal and/or associated with moral depravity or sex; yet, quite paradoxically at first sight, the greater the euphemistic origin, the more prone the names of diseases are to giving rise to negatively-connoted, dysphemistic expressions, mostly metaphors (see Sontag [1990: 74]: “And there is a tendency to call any situation one disapproves of a disease”). In other words, when you nowadays use the name of a disease to refer to something else, the very name turns into a dysphemism: for example, the plague (Sontag [1990: 132] indicates that “[p]lague, from the Latin plaga (stroke, wound), has long been used metaphorically as the highest standard of collective calamity, evil, scourge”) / un pestiféré / be treated like a leper (even if leprosy is easily cured nowadays, the stigma still exists), or une lépreuse in French, which is still the name given to a mouldering stone façade. Sontag [1990: 58] summarizes this as follows: Feelings about evil are projected onto a disease. And the disease (so enriched with meanings) is projected onto the world.
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42 Let me briefly illustrate my point with some occurrences drawn from the COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) for English and from Sketch Engine Corpora for French: I italicized the name of the disease used as a dysphemistic semantic neologism, and, following the precepts of semantic prosody, I underlined the terms shading some negative connotation in the utterances:
(1) I got my car washed while the girl listened to some truly disgusting rap song on a radio. So, I thought, rap, the AIDS of culture, has reached northern Idaho. (Stein Benjamin J., On location, American Spectator, Vol. 25, issue 10, October 1992, 43) (2) The strongest reaction came from composer-arranger Julio Medagila, who had worked with the tropicalists. In his diatribe, he called rock the AIDS of popular music. (Perrone Charles A., Changing of the guard: Questions and contrasts of Brazilian rock phenomena, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Vol. 9, 1990, 65) (3) He wasn’t a sex pig last month when he campaigned for Phil Murphy in New Jersey. But now that his wife has lost the presidency and Bill is under scrutiny, he is suddenly a leper to the party that enabled him for decades. Sell it somewhere else. None of us believe it. The truth is you have to question how seriously these Democratic women take sexual harassment. These are some of the same women who held a pep rally for Bill Clinton in 1998 after his impeachment. (Condemnations Of Convenience; Clinton Accusers Speak Out; Collapse Of Political Dynasties; Hillary Clinton Comments on Sexual Misconduct Allegations against Roy Moore, Al Franken, and President Trump, Ingraham Angle 10:00 PM EST, 2017 (171117 SPOK)) (4) My former supervisor had given me some advice before I was transferred to the boondocks. “Play it tough,” Sgt. Kathy Frost had said. “When you’re assigned to a new district, you need to come on strong, or people will think you’re a pussy. Especially way Down East, where they eat wardens for breakfast.” Everywhere I’d gone for the past three weeks, people treated me like a leper. Doc Larrabee was one of the lonely exceptions. Maybe he felt sorry for me, or maybe, as a recent widower living alone in an isolated farmhouse, he thought that hanging around with the hated new game warden would be the cure for midwinter boredom. (Doiron Paul, Bad Little Falls: a novel, New York: Minotaur Books, 1st Ed., 2012) (5) En déroulant le tapis rouge pour l’ancien pestiféré de la communauté internationale, Nicolas Sarkozy confirme que cette première visite en France de Kadhafi depuis quatre décennies faisait bien partie du « deal » intervenu en juillet dernier. http://luciennemagaliepons.blogspot.com/2007/12/le-colonel-kadhafi- paris.html (6) Il suffit de considérer le cas de Monsieur Vanneste, qui n’a fait que dire fort dignement et sans unanimité des choses fort justes, et qui est maintenant lâché aux chiens comme un pestiféré. Ce qu’il disait aurait été une pensée banale, modérée et polie il y a de cela vingt ans. Ses propos le vouent désormais à l’enfer - Enfin je crois que dans la société française, les hommes politiques ne sont que les alibis d’une caste de fonctionnaires. http://philippepemezec.blogspirit.com/archive/2007/01/02/bonne- annee-2007.html (7) sale race qu’est l’être humain dans sa totalité... nous sommes le cancer de cette planète... http://www.webchoc.com/videos2/spip.php?article20460
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(8) Non j’aimerai qu’il gagne pour faire fermer la gueule de l’avocat de Nafissatou, parce qu’il appelle au rassemblement des communautés et je suis totalement contre le communautarisme qui est l’un des plus gros cancer (sic) de ce monde. http://wearehnr.wordpress.com/tag/dsk/ (9) Il est le summum de l’évolution. Il est le prédateur. Il est le dévoreur de monde. Il est le cancer de cette galaxie. Il est l’ombre sur nos vies. http://forum-tyranide.forumactif.org/t1676-un-organisme-parfait (10) Le 14 janvier, environ 400 étudiants de la faculté de droit manifestent contre l’admission dans leur faculté de 62 étudiants, des rapatriés pour la plupart, contre les pots-de-vin allant de 2 000 à 3 000 dollars (11) versés aux fonctionnaires de la faculté. La corruption est le sida de la société crient les manifestants, « Ce n’est pas la démocratie, mais l’anarchie ». http://eglasie.mepasie.org/asie-du-sud-est/cambodge/convalescence-ou- rechute-le-point-sur-la-situation
43 As Sontag [1990: 6] clearly showed, “[a]ny disease that is treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared will be felt to be morally, if not literally, contagious.” She also adds: [I]t is diseases thought to be multi-determined (that is, mysterious) that have the widest possibilities as metaphors for what is felt to be socially or morally wrong. [Sontag 1990: 61]
44 Diseases and illnesses are therefore not just diseases and illnesses, but become metaphors for a judgment passed onto something looked upon, as Sontag [1990: 72-73] writes: Illnesses have always been used as metaphors to enliven charges that a society was corrupt or unjust. Traditional disease metaphors are principally a way of being vehement. […] Disease metaphors are used to judge society not as out of balance but as repressive.
45 Long-term diseases in general, and cancer in particular, are often expressed through the war metaphor, where the disease is the enemy, the patient is the victim of an invasion, and treatment is the counterattack. This military metaphor can – at least initially – be considered a euphemism in the sense that it softens the aspect of the disease that is frightening and unknown, to focus on another aspect, the “fight”, the “struggle” or “crusade” against cancer, which is the “killer” disease and patients “cancer victims”. We find expressions such as fight hard, or fight back, which are not originally attached to the disease itself7. Let us now examine more closely the very words and expressions used euphemistically in French and English, and see how they expand the lexicon through specific word-formation processes.
3. What’s in a name? (Re)inventing illness and disease through euphemistic language
46 So far, we have been examining euphemisms in discourse, i.e. the way language is used to euphemize. We are now turning our attention to the code itself, and how euphemisms are incorporated into the systems that most speakers of a language use. Now that the reasons why diseases and illnesses are still tabooed nowadays have been developed, we will see that it is relevant to consider the role of taboo and taboo language in the neological expansion of the lexicon, as Keyes writes:
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An excellent way to determine what we find embarrassing is to examine our verbal evasions. They indicate what’s on our minds [Keyes 2010: 4]. […] Euphemisms are an accurate barometer of changing attitudes [Keyes 2010: 11].
47 Or Burridge: No matter which human group we look at, past or present, euphemism and its counterpart dysphemism are powerful forces and they are extremely important for the study of language change. They provide an emotive trigger for word addition, word loss, phonological distortion and semantic shift [Burridge 2012].
48 In their pivotal study on taboo language, Allan & Burridge recognize the role played by euphemism and dysphemism in lexical creation and expansion: Taboo and the consequent censoring of language motivate language change by promoting the creation of highly inventive and often playful new expressions, or new meanings for old expressions, causing existing vocabulary to be abandoned [Allan & Burridge 2006: 2].
49 As I mentioned previously, a neologism is created either to fill in a lexical gap (a new object, a new concept is invented or discovered and needs to be named), or to fine-tune an existing notion (a phenomenon which is possibly often accompanied by a slight semantic shift). As Schmid [2016: 69] states: [N]ew words are continually being added to the lexicon, generally because new objects are being invented and new ideas are arising, all requiring a designation. In addition, words which are not strictly speaking ‘required’ for naming purposes are created to encapsulate new trends and social practices.
50 As Foubert & Lemmens [2018, this volume] clearly indicate, “[…] the need for new words highlights the social dimension of language”, as society triggers changes in language, but the language we speak also shapes our apprehension of the world. Yet, as far as disease euphemisms are concerned, there does not seem to be any lexical gap to fill in, as the reality and the words to refer to it already exist; what are therefore the motivations behind the creation of euphemisms and dysphemisms, especially when it comes to refer to illness and disease?
51 The various reasons underlying the creation – and potential success – of euphemisms and dysphemisms depend mostly on the reasons why they are used and the types of euphemisms and dysphemisms (protective euphemisms, underhand euphemisms, uplifting euphemisms, provocative euphemisms, cohesive euphemisms, ludic euphemisms, etc.8). This means that if society plays a role in the lexical expansion of taboo language, the very context of utterance can also play a part. Basically, several functions for the creation of euphemisms and dysphemisms can be identified, but we have to keep in mind that the functions can overlap and be found together for a given lexeme or phrase: • A desire to be polite or impolite / humorous (Face Flattering Act or Face Threatening Act, see Brown & Levinson [1987] or Allan & Burridge [2006: 39]); • An argumentative function (convince the interlocutor(s) of the relevance of the new image offered by the new signifier); • A relational function (create a feeling of in-groupness between the speaker and the interlocutor(s), create a specific identity to include some, and exclude others); • The need to change the (vision of the) world (offer a new signifier to highlight the change in the perception of the world), as clearly stated by Pruvost & Sablayrolles: Parfois, par identification abusive du signe et du référent, on a l’illusion qu’en changeant le nom on change la réalité. Qu’ont gagné les pauvres à devenir des
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économiquement faibles, les clochards des SDF, et les aveugles des déficients visuels ? […] Parfois aussi le changement de dénomination est la marque d’une volonté de modifier la manière de concevoir certaines réalités [Pruvost & Sablayrolles 2012 (2003): 83]. Il y a unanimité à penser qu’une langue qui n’évolue plus est une langue morte. La langue doit pouvoir permettre de parler des nouvelles réalités qui apparaissent ainsi que des nouvelles manières d’être ou de penser de la ou des communautés qui la parlent [Pruvost & Sablayrolles 2012 (2003): 82].
52 In any case, taboo language engenders some lexical expansion, which is revealing of the evolution of society, as explained by Pruvost & Sablayrolles: La néologie reflète la progression d’une langue tout autant que l’évolution d’une société. […] Le langage est daté et ce sont les néologismes qui en sont les éléments comptables les plus marquants [Pruvost & Sablayrolles 2012 (2003): 28].
53 If the original names of diseases have been generated by orthonyms to fill in a lexical gap – a label was needed to refer to the disease, as we will see below – the euphemisms that followed are rather triggered off by other reasons, more particularly to fine-tune an existing notion, even if the euphemistic dimension is quickly lost. I now want to show that taboo language used to refer to illness and disease in English and in French is particularly productive and creative, just like any taboo domain, as euphemisms – and sometimes dysphemisms – play a role in re-naming an existing disease.
54 The taboo language for illness and disease swarms with euphemisms and dysphemisms, which are generated by a wide range of linguistic devices and mitigating discursive expressions. The classification below is organized following the two main cases of neologisms as exemplified by Pruvost & Sablayrolles [2012 (2003)]’s classification. Specific word-formation processes can be listed for the creation of euphemisms and dysphemisms for illness and disease, as the following examples below illustrate but, in all cases, there is a blurring effect on the signifier for euphemisms, as if to reduce the taboo contained in the signified. I only chose some examples to illustrate my point, but there are many other examples that could fit in the different categories.
3.1. A new meaning for an existing signifier (i.e. widening or narrowing of meaning via metaphor, metonymy, semantic shift, etc.).
55 In this case, new words are created by modifying the meaning of existing words – i.e. the signified – and there is no morphological creation per se. Euphemisms and dysphemisms for diseases and illnesses are generated by two principal mechanisms of lexical innovation, i.e. metonymy and metaphor, and they are lexicalized most of the time, leading to an expansion of the lexicon.
56 As mentioned previously, narrowing a.k.a. specialization of meaning, is quite frequent in the disease lexicon, and even the current meaning of the words hospital / hôpital has been generated through a process of specialization / narrowing of meaning: the two words initially meant a place of welcome and healing for weary travelers, and share the same roots as those of “hostel”, “hospice” and “hotel”. The current meaning narrowed down to the purely medical meaning.
57 a) Metonymy and hypernymy: the two notions are closely linked, as most metonymies found to refer euphemistically to diseases often resort to a hypernym. A hypernym is a word that names a broad category (“disease”) that includes other words (“cancer”,
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“flu”, cold”, etc.). Metonymy is defined as an inclusion process between two related conceptual domains, an association of ideas by which you refer to a referent by one of its attributes, to the inventor by the invention (and vice-versa), etc. As far as names of diseases are concerned, it is especially “the name of the scientist +’s + disease” in English and “maladie + de + the name of the scientist” that are mostly used to refer to the disease orthophemistic, as the following occurrences exemplify; even if those terms are not real euphemisms, the names tend nowadays to be perceived as orthophemisms, i.e. as the prototypical way to refer to the disease; resorting to metonymy in that case is essentially for reasons linked to the denomination paradigms available at the time the disease was discovered, and which may vary depending on the periods and the places9. The names therefore play a role in the terminological construction of the domain, as exemplified by the examples of the first category:
58 The name of the physicist for the disease
(11) Hansen’s disease / Maladie de Hansen (from the physicist who discovered the bacillus responsible for the disease – leprosy – in 1871) (12) Crohn’s disease (a.k.a. morbus disease) / Maladie de Crohn, (13) Huntington’s disease / Maladie de Huntington (14) Parkinson’s disease / (Maladie de) Parkinson (15) Alzheimer’s (disease) / (Maladie d’)Alzheimer / un Alzheimer (a euphemism for Senile Dementia of Alzheimer type; it is interesting to note that for this degenerative disease the word “disease” is most of the time omitted, and just the name of the physicist is kept), (16) Down Syndrom / Syndrome de Down (a.k.a. Trisomy 21; it is interesting to note that the word “disease” disappears, once again), etc.
59 The effect or result for the disease
(17) Consumption (= “eating up”, i.e. tuberculosis), etc. (18) Not feel too good / Ne pas être très bien (used to euphemize any minor condition), (19) Tumor / Growth / Une tumeur / Une grosseur (especially used to euphemize the word “cancer”), (20) Absentmindedness / Absences (Alzheimer’s disease, or any senile disease), (21) A long / prolonged / incurable illness / Une longue et douloureuse maladie / Une maladie incurable (cancer), (22) Be sick / Être malade (vomit), (23) Hard-of-hearing / Avoir des problèmes d’audition (deaf), (24) Have the runs / Have an upset stomach / Avoir la courante (have diarrhea), etc.
60 The reason for the disease
(25) Fièvre de Lassa (fièvre Ebola, from Lassa, a town in Nigeria) / Virus Marburg (from a town in Germany where the virus appeared in Europe) / Virus du Nil occidental, etc. (26) French sickness / French gout (venereal disease) / Fièvre hémorragique bolivienne (typhus noir), (27) Venereal/Venusian disease / Maladie vénérien/ne (associated with sex, but originally associated with love, as the name of Venus, the goddess of love, indicates), (28) Social disease (venereal disease), (29) Not doing well (dying), etc.
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61 It is interesting to note that the first examples in (25) are rather neutral, and lexicalized, as the disease is located at a specific place, and the following examples (26), (27), (28) and (29) are more euphemistic, as the names of the diseases put the blame on foreigners; English and French resort to adjectives referring to nationalities or toponyms to dilute the threatening effect attached to the taboo, and to blame foreigners for the disease at the same time. The first example is clearly linked to the terminology of the domain – then to neology per se – when the others act more as discursive euphemisms.
62 (b) Metaphor: metaphor is an analogical process through which you notice a resemblance – or even a difference – between two conceptual domains that are logically unrelated at first sight. By definition, and following the precepts of Cognitive Linguistics, metaphor enables the speaker to offer a new vision of a given referent, which is in keeping with what euphemisms and dysphemisms aim to do. Even if some diseases have been named metaphorically (see cancer, a real neologism at the time of its creation), most of the occurrences below are used as substitutes to avoid mentioning the name of the disease:
(30) Cancer (from Greek karkinos and Latin cancer, “crab”, because of the resemblance of an external tumor’s swollen veins to a crab’s legs), etc. (31) Be under the weather / Be off-colour (GB) / Ne pas être dans son assiette, (32) Be down in the dumps / Avoir le cafard, (33) Be out of sorts / Être mal luné, (34) Be green around the gills / Avoir une tête de déterré/e, (35) Have trouble with one’s waterworks (have a bladder condition) / Avoir des problèmes de plomberie (avoir des problèmes intestinaux), (36) Be (a) lunatic (see loon, loony; from the madness supposedly caused by the changing phases of the moon) / Have kangaroos in one’s top paddock (Australian: be insane) or not be sixteen annas to the rupee (Anglo-Indian: be insane) / Être cinglé/e / félé/e / barré/e / cintré/e / sonné/e / frappé/e / siphonné/ e / givré/e / timbré/e / fondu/e / Avoir un grain / Avoir un un petit vélo dans la tête / Être marteau / Yoyoyter de la cafetière, (37) Montezuma’s revenge (diarrhea), etc.
3.2. A new signifier for an existing meaning (i.e. a new signifier is either invented, or borrowed from the actual lexicon, with a new meaning)
63 In that case, new lexemes or phrases are not created by modifying the meaning of existing lexemes or phrases, but rather by modifying the morphology of existing ones, or by a creation per se. Disease euphemisms are therefore generated by various word- formation processes or mitigating devices, such as borrowing, shortening (clipping, acronyms and initials), rhyming slang, litotes a.k.a. negative of the contrary and circumlocution. Most of the time, the signifier will either be cut out, reduced or, on the contrary, lengthened, as if to dilute its threatening effect.
64 a) Borrowing: borrowing (of loan words) consists in borrowing a lexeme or phrase from a foreign language (mostly Latin, and to a lesser extent Greek) to use it in French or English or from a technical language; generally speaking, technical language – jargon, medicalese, specialized terminology, labels – generally has an orthophemistic value, and therefore plays a role in terminology, but may also become euphemistic
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according to the context and the intention of the speaker, as recalled by Crawford [2008]: Medicine borrowed mainly Latin terms in order to label and discuss disease, and conversely, many of these Latinate terms were absorbed into lay terminology as euphemistic ways of referring to dreaded illnesses.
65 It very often results in technical terms, learned and loan words, as the lexemes are generally borrowed from classical languages which are perceived as more abstract, especially in English, therefore allowing the creation of a distance between the signifier and reality, as Neaman & Silver [1990 (1983): 144] write: Doctors, for example, tell us that they do not euphemize, but evidence points to the contrary. Technical, medical language, laden with Greek and Latin, may seem precise and literal to those who use it, but to the ordinary patient, it may be incomprehensible. Therefore, such language elevates the position of the specialist, establishing him or her as a member of a privileged and powerful secret society. Furthermore, it may conceal both the meaning and the seriousness of the illness under discussion. When a potentially fatal condition like a heart attack is called a MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION or “an MI,” the terror may abate even though the pain does not. On the other hand, an EPISTAXIS seems far more dignified and worthy of medical treatment than a mere nosebleed.
66 We can notice an almost perfect pairing between French and English for those terminological lexemes:
(38) Myocardial infarction / Infarctus du myocarde (from Greek myo-, from Ancient Greek μῦς (mus) “muscle” and -carde, from Ancien Greek καρδία (kardia), “heart”, (39) Herpes / Herpès (from Greek “a creeping”), (40) Oncology / Oncologie (from Greek onkos, ‘mass’), (41) Mitotic chromosomal instability, Mitotic disease, Mitotis / Mitose (from Greek mitos, ‘filament’), (42) Melanoma / Mélanome (from Ancient Greek μέλας, μέλανος ( melas, melanos), “black” and -oma, “tumor”, from Ancient Greek -ωμα (ôma), derived from ὠμός (ômos), “hard, cruel, inhumane”), (43) Lymphoma / Lymphome (from Latin lympha, ‘water’, and Greek -oma, “tumor”), (44) Neoplasm / Néoplasme (tumor, growth, from the Greek neo- “new” + Greek plasma “formation”, a word coined in German and borrowed from German by English and French), (45) Carcinoma / Carcinome (from Greek karkinôma, ‘cancer’), (46) Aprosexia / Aprosexie (pathological inability to sustain attention), (47) Gonorrhea / Gonorrhée/Blennorragie (from Ancient Greek γονόρροια (gonórrhoia), from γόνος (gónos, “sperm, seed, offspring”) + ῥοία (rhoía, “flow”), etc. (48) Treponemal disease / Luetic disease / Spirochaetal disease (= syphilis), (49) Morbus disease (from Latin, Crohn’s disease), (50) Piles (= hemorrhoids, from Latin pila, “ball”), etc.
67 Finally, let us mention that English also occasionally borrowed from French: the euphemism clap, used to refer to any venereal disease (such as gonorrhea), has been borrowed from French clapoir, a word meaning “swelling”.
68 Borrowing is thus quite a productive word-formation process both in English and in French, especially to name a disease, and thus playing a role in terminology. What is interesting is that the technical label can also become a euphemistic way to refer to the
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disease. Let us now examine two opposite morphological word-formation processes – i.e. shortening and circumlocution – which, surprisingly, can both be used to generate disease euphemisms.
69 b) Shortening (clipping, acronyms and initials): shortening is a morpho-lexical device generating mostly terminological euphemisms, as the signifier is “minced”, or “cut out”, and is felt to be less offensive than the corresponding orthophemism. For disease euphemisms, it is interesting to note that most of the time native speakers are unaware of the acronyms behind the term, as the motivation is completely lost10, and that they quickly become terminological labels, even if the full forms co-exist11:
(51) AIDS / sida (it is interesting to note the upper-case spelling in English and the lower-case spelling in French, and that numerous terms in the AIDSpeak lexicon include acronyms: PISD, People with Immune System Disorder, PLUS, Positive Living for US, ACT UP, AIDS Coalition TO Unleash Power), (52) The Big C / CA (for cancer), (53) STD (Sexually-Transmitted Diseases) / MST (Maladies Sexuellement Transmissibles), (54) MI (Myocardial infarction) / IDM (Infarctus du myocarde), (55) CABG (coronary artery bypass graft) / PAC (pontage aorto-coronarien), (56) RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury, aka tenosynovitis), (57) PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), (58) TB (tuberculosis or consumption), (59) VD (Veneral Disease), (60) HSV (herpes), etc.
70 c) Circumlocution: circumlocution consists in using several words to say something that could be said more clearly and directly by using fewer words. This process is generally used to create euphemisms, as there seems to be a dilution of the signifier and one of the most useful ways of diluting the threatening effect of the original signifier, i.e. the orthophemism (the longer the mitigating euphemistic expression, the politer it is expected to be). No terminological examples have been found, probably do to the length of the expressions created, which makes it difficult for them to be completely lexicalized. In my corpus, it is interesting to note that circumlocution can also generate humorous words with a ludic dimension, as exemplified in the occurrences below:
(61) Patients in a terminal situation / Patients en (unités de) soins palliatifs, (62) A prolonged illness / A long battle against illness / Une longue et douloureuse maladie contre laquelle X s’est battu/e avec toutes ses forces et son courage, (63) There’s something wrong with my ticker / The old pump’s not working too well (heart disease) / J’ai des problèmes de tuyauterie, (64) Actually visually handicapped / Sight-deprived / Souffrant d’un trouble majeur de la vue / de l’audition (blind/deaf), (65) I’m feeling poorly / Je ne me sens pas très bien, etc.
71 d) Rhyming slang: rhyming slang is a form of slang word construction mostly found in the English language that uses rhyme to create neologisms – and very often a ludic dimension added to the expression; it consists in replacing a common word with a phrase made up of two or more words, the last of which rhymes with the original word and, in almost all cases, omitting, from the end of the phrase, the secondary rhyming word. The most frequent form is the Cockney Rhyming Slang originating in the East
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End of London (see for example Smith [2015 (2011)]); Rhyming Slang is not a productive word-formation process in French, at least for disease euphemisms, and does not play a role in terminological designations:
(66) Band in the box / jack(-in-the-box) / Nervo and Knox (Rhyming Slang for pox) (67) Bang and biff (Rhyming Slang for syph(ilis)), (68) Hat and cap (Rhyming Slang for clap), etc.
72 e) Phonetic alteration: this process consists in altering the phonological structure of the signifier to make it less threatening; very few cases of this process are found for disease euphemisms, and the only cases I found are in English:
(69) Pox (venereal disease, spelling alteration of pockes, plural of pocke, especially (after c. 1500) of syphilis; this is a case of terminological euphemism), etc. (70) Emerads (hemorrhoids), etc.
73 f) Litotes a.k.a. negative of the contrary: this process consists in stating the same thing with antonyms, and very often results in circumlocution (see category c)), i.e. what Jamet & Jobert [2010: 15] and Jamet [2010: 47] call “a dilution of the signifier”; several euphemisms exhibit a dilution of the signifier, as if it was one of the most useful ways of diluting its threatening effect too. The longer the mitigating euphemistic expression, the politer it is expected to be, even if the negation contained in the word is not perceived any longer, because it lost its original motivation (see demented / dément/ e or imbecile / imbécile); those cases of demotivated euphemisms are often terminological nowadays:
(71) Demented / Dément/e (from Latin de- “out of” + mens “mind”), (72) Imbecile / Imbécile (from Latin im- “without” + bacillum “small staff”, literally “without a stick”), (73) Insane / Insanity (the meaning of “insane” also seems to have narrowed from the latin in- (“not”) + sanus (“healthy”) and could originally be applied to all organs and body functions; today it only denotes a mental condition), etc. (74) I’m not feeling so well/good / Be unwell / Be indisposed / Indisposition / Ne pas se sentir bien / Être indisposé/e / Indisposition, (75) Out of sorts / Out of kilter / Déréglé/e, (76) Be unsighted / Être non/mal voyant, etc.
74 All those examples tend to show – even if they are not all lexicalized – that taboo language exhibits a high lexical productivity, and that euphemisms and dysphemisms for disease and illness play a significant part in the lexical expansion of the domain, creating new lexemes or phrases to refer to an existing reality.
75 What needs finally to be highlighted is the frequent combination of word-formation processes in the euphemistic lexicon of diseases; let us take the adjective indisposed / indisposé as an example:
(77) indisposed (adj.) c. 1400, “unprepared;” early 15c., “not in order,” from in- (1) “not” + disposed; or else from Late Latin indispositus “without order, confused.” From mid-15c. in English as “diseased;” modern sense of “not very well, slightly ill” is from 1590s. A verb indispose is attested from 1650s but perhaps is a back-formation
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of this, rather than its source, or from French indisposer. (https:// www.etymonline.com/word/indisposed) (78) INDISPOSÉ, ÉE, part. passé et adj. Étymol. et Hist. 1. Ca 1407 indisposé « gâté, mis en mauvais état » (J. GERSON, Dialogue spirituel ds Œuvres, éd. P. Glorieux, t. VII, p. 166 : ame indisposée par pechié mortel); 1662 s’indisposer « se préparer mal (à quelque chose) » ([LEMAISTRE DE SACY] De l’Imitation de Jesus-Christ, 1. 4, chap. 12, p. 384 : Celuy qui apres m’avoir receu se répand aussi-tost en des satisfactions exterieures, s’indispose beaucoup pour me recevoir); 2. a) 1455 indisposé « légèrement malade » (Arch. Nord, B 1686, fo50 ds IGLF : femme indisposée de sa personne); 1828 trans. « rendre légèrement malade » (MOZIN-BIBER); b) 1891 spéc. « qui a ses règles » (HUYSMANS, Là-bas, t. 1, p. 101); 3. 1675 indisposé contre « fâché, mécontent » (MÉNAGE, Obs. sur la lang. fr., t. II, p. 446 ds BRUNOT t. 4, p. 484); av. 1679 s’indisposer contre « prendre en aversion » (RETZ, Œuvres, t. IV, p. 229 : elle s’indisposoit contre ses amants). Dér. de disposer* et de son part. passé disposé; préf. in-1*. Cf. lat. indispositus « mal ordonné, confus », lat. chrét. « mal préparé, surpris ». (http://www.cnrtl.fr)
76 These etymologies show that the euphemisms have been generated by a) borrowing from Latin; b) litotes a.k.a. negative of the contrary (see negative prefix in-); c) metonymy (the result for the disease).
Concluding remarks: illness and disease euphemisms as pharmakon?
77 As this article has endeavored to show, taboo language plays a role in the creation and expansion of the lexicon and represents a powerful source of word formation neology. As the corpus of taboo language for illness and disease exemplified, euphemisms and dysphemisms exhibit one of the fundamental dimensions of lexical creation and expansion: creativity, a factor which seems fundamental in the evolution of any given language, as noted by Keyes: One might even argue that the need to come up with euphemisms for terms considered taboo is our most ancient source of verbal creativity. After all, it’s far more difficult to say what one doesn’t mean that what one does. An ability to do so – to create euphemisms and use them effectively – demonstrates a high order of intellectual sophistication [Keyes 2010: 248].
78 The taboo surrounding disease has always existed even if it changed targets and forms. In the beginning the taboo centered essentially on physical diseases for superstition- related reasons, but with the advent of medicine, and when mentally diseases started to be investigated, the reasons behind the creation of disease euphemisms changed. Previously incurable body diseases are no longer tabooed because they do not represent a threat to health anymore. However, they have been replaced by new diseases that we do not understand and do not know how to cure yet; they have become the new topic for taboo and euphemisms. As we have seen, the process of creating new taboos and euphemisms is cyclic; we can therefore imagine that in some decades the taboos we discussed today will be outdated and will have been supplanted by new, unknown diseases. Therefore, I disagree with Jeffries [1998: 218], when he writes that “[t]he taboo surrounding disease as largely faded during the twentieth century in Britain, but there have been fluctuations in the strength of a number of taboos during this period”.
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79 There is undeniably power in euphemisms, the power to soften the impact of a disease – maybe too much (think of the euphemism brief illness to refer to suicide…). Disease euphemisms can be seen as pharmakon, from the Greek word φάρμακον (phármakon), a composite of three meanings: remedy, poison, and scapegoat. This paradoxical role played by disease euphemisms is in keeping with the fact that their power is not infinite, as once a euphemism runs out of power due to the so-called “euphemism treadmill”, it can become as bad as the word it replaces… and a new euphemism has to be created. That is the never-ending story of euphemistic language… and diseases…
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TOURNIER Jean, 1991b, Structures lexicales de l’anglais : guide alphabétique, Paris: Nathan Université.
Corpus
ANDERSON Douglas M. (chief lexicographer), 1994 (1940), Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, Philadelphia: WB Saunders Co.
COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English): https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/
HOLDER R. W., 2003 (1995), Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms. How Not to Say What You Mean, New York, Oxford University Press.
MC DONALD James, 1988, A Dictionary of Obscenity, Taboo & Euphemism, London: Sphere Books Ltd.
NEANMAN Judith S. & SILVER Carole G., 1991, The Wordsworth Book of Euphemism, Wordsworth Editions Ltd.
RAWSON Hugh, 1981, A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Double Talk. Being a Compilation of Linguistic Fig Leaves & Verbal Flourishes for Artful Users of the English Language, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.
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Sketch Engine Corpora: https://www.sketchengine.eu/
NOTES
1. Notable exceptions (including studies on taboo in other languages) can yet be mentioned, such as the remarks on euphemism in Keller [1994], as well as Reutner [2009] and especially Montserrat López & Sablayrolles [2016] for French. According to Keller, euphemism can even be considered to be a key factor of language change, and he provides a clear description of the wearout effects that can be regularly observed in euphemisms. Other studies have been carried out in the field of cognitive sociolinguistics (see for example Andrea Pizaro’s workshop at the 2015 International Cognitive Linguistics Conference) or in the fields of computational linguistics (see for example Kris Heylen’s computational analyses). 2. H. L. Mencken [1936 (1919): 302] called the nineteenth century “the Golden Age of Euphemism”. 3. Many thanks to John Humbley who mentioned that this is one of the main difficulties of French-English medical translation: how should “maladie” be translated? “sickness”, “illness”, “disease”, “condition”, etc.? 4. Sontag [1990: 104] writes that “[i]t seems that societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its “victims,” but it is hard to be obsessed with more than one. 5. That is a reason why AIDS was initially labeled Gay Cancer and Gay Plague. 6. Sontag [1990: 126] writes that “[t]he most terrifying illnesses are those perceived not just as lethal but as dehumanizing, literally so”. 7. According to Richardt [2005], the conceptual metaphor DISEASE IS WAR is not restricted to cancer but is used to talk about disease in general. 8. For more details, see Burridge [2012]. 9. Many thanks to John Humbley for pointing out this fact. 10. See words such as laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) or radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging). 11. Another reason accounting for shortening is advocated by Bowker & Herrera [2004: 44]: patients often shorten the name of their disease or condition to create a “connivance effect”: lap (laparoscopy), o (ovulation), BF (breastfeeding), m/c (miscarriage), pg (pregnant), mets (metastases), ultra (ultrasound), mammo ( mammogram), etc. Thank you to John Humbley for mentioning this reference.
ABSTRACTS
According to Allan & Burridge [1991: 11], “[a] euphemism is used as an alternative to a dispreferred expression, in order to avoid possible loss of face: either one’s own face or, through giving offence, that of the audience, or some third party.” The word “alternative” seems to imply that there is always a choice for speakers, according to the situation of utterance, the interlocutor(s), the register, etc. Yet, in some cases, there does not seem to be much choice, and some euphemisms are completely lexicalized as they have imposed themselves as the only
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acceptable ways to refer to a given referent or a given notion. This may be the case for politically-correct terms for instance, or for euphemisms referring to notions that are deemed too shocking or painful to be directly mentioned, such as diseases. This article aims to discuss the aspects of word-formation process in the euphemistic lexicon of physical and mental illnesses in English and in French, by resorting to a comparative analysis. I will try and show that if some euphemistic neologisms are generated to circumvent the taboo surrounding diseases and illnesses, some others act as real terminological creations and enable to play a role in structuring the domain.
Selon Allan & Burridge [1991 : 11], « [un] euphémisme est utilisé comme alternative face à une expression moins désirable, afin d’éviter une perte de face, que ce soit sa propre face, ou bien celle de l’interlocuteur, ou d’une quelconque autre personne » (ma traduction). Le terme « alternative » semble impliquer qu’il existe toujours un choix pour les locuteurs, selon la situation d’énonciation, les interlocuteurs, le registre, etc. Cependant, dans plusieurs cas, il ne semble pas y avoir de réel choix, et certains euphémismes sont totalement lexicalisés dans le sens où ils se sont imposés comme les uniques façons de dénoter tel ou tel référent ou telle ou telle notion. C’est ainsi le cas des termes issus du politiquement correct, par exemple, ou des euphémismes utilisés dans la dénomination de notions jugées trop choquantes ou douloureuses pour être mentionnées directement, comme les maladies. Cet article se propose de mettre au jour les aspects de la création néologique dans le domaine du lexique d’origine euphémique des maladies physiques et mentales en anglais et en français. Je montrerai que si certains néologismes euphémiques sont générés pour court-circuiter le tabou autour de la maladie, d’autres agissent tels de réels néologismes terminologiques en ce qu’ils permettent de structurer le domaine.
INDEX
Mots-clés: tabou, langage tabouique, euphémisme, dysphémisme, maladie, néologie, néologisme, motivation, langue anglaise, langue française Keywords: taboo, taboo language, euphemism, dysphemism, illness, disease, neology, neologism, motivation, English language, French language
AUTHOR
DENIS JAMET Université de Lyon (UJML3) & University of Arizona [email protected]
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The Complementarity of Crowdsourced Dictionaries and Professional Dictionaries viewed through the Filter of Neology
Franck Sajous, Amélie Josselin-Leray and Nabil Hathout
Introduction
1 This paper is part of a series of papers aiming to compare dictionaries compiled by professional lexicographers to dictionaries written by so-called amateurs. In previous studies, we have compared the macrostructures of those dictionaries and their coverage of the lexicon of various fields (F. Sajous et al. [2014]), analyzed the idea of neutrality in relation to the informativeness of definitions (F. Sajous & N. Hathout [2017]) and compared their treatment of a specialized field – computing science (F. Sajous et al. [2018]). In those papers, we have shown the specific features of the two types of dictionaries and their complementarity instead of simply opposing them. In this paper, the comparison of professional and amateur dictionaries is viewed through the filter of neology. Such a perspective can seem paradoxical since one usually considers that once a lexical unit has been recorded in the dictionary, it loses its neological status (J.-F. Sablayrolles [2008], M.-F. Mortureux [2011]). In reality, things are slightly more complex. First, there is no real consensus on the neological status of lexical units. Second, when professional dictionaries, just like amateur ones, compete to include the latest buzzwords (which are considered a selling point), the semantic descriptions of the new headwords included in the macrostructure are not always accurate since lexicographers do not have the benefit of hindsight. Another thorny issue in the study of neology and, as a consequence, in the lexicographical treatment of neologisms, is the wide array of linguistic and extralinguistic phenomena inducing the change. Despite the many studies on that topic, there is no universally acknowledged typology of neologisms. The words under study, through the comparison of a number
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of definitions taken from professional general-purpose dictionaries and from amateur dictionaries on the one hand, and from term banks and specialized amateur dictionaries on the other hand, have been chosen to illustrate both the various difficulties of dealing with neologisms in dictionaries and the wide range of linguistic phenomena that lead to linguistic changes. The words analyzed are either relatively recent neologisms (e.g. fake news, post-truth) or words that are not formal neologisms but which may fall into the following categories: (i) semantic neologisms (e.g. hacker in English), (ii) words that refer to evolving concepts (e.g. hackathon is not considered a neologism any more in the field of computing science – even if the definitions provided for this term in the field are not always accurate –, but its determinologization has brought about new meanings), (iii) words that are back in the front-page news and are still controversial and thus subject to metadiscursive statements, which in the end leads to new semantic shifts (e.g. migrant / refugee in British English), (iv) words that are specialized but whose technicity is rather low (e.g. hackathon again) or words that come from subcultures whose deep knowledge is a prerequisite for lexicographers trying to identify relevant semantic features (e.g. graphic novel / roman graphique), (v) words which are subject to lexical competition and whose very existence can only be accounted for by the analysis of their motivation and by identifying the linguistic actors at play (e.g. pro-life and anti-abortion), the issue being that the conclusions of such an analysis are often deemed too controversial to be explicitly stated in dictionaries. Although our main focus is on English neologisms, we also occasionally comment on French neologisms when they result from borrowing or are a literal translation that is used either at the same time as the English neologism or shortly later: in that case, analyzing whether the differences in the treatment of those neologisms are due to different lexicographical practices, to different sociocultural contexts or to a shift in the concept that the neologism relates to can prove enlightening.
2 Section 1 is dedicated to the presentation of the dictionaries under study, with a particular focus on crowdsourced ones, whose specificities (editorial policy, contribution mode, etc.) are relevant for the issues at stake in the study of neology. In section 2, we study some examples of euphemisms and oxymorons that were not coined for stylistic purposes, but with marketing and ideological concerns in mind. The analysis of a number of definitions shows which (sometimes unclear) motivations underlie those neologisms. Through examples taken from the fields of comic books and computer science, Section 3 discusses the fact that describing all the relevant semantic features of terms which do not seem very technical at first sight may require some domain-specific knowledge that a single lexicographer or even a terminologist may lack. In that case, resorting to the diversified expertise of Internet users might prove extremely useful.
1. Tackling the Issue of Neologism Analysis: from professionals to the crowds
3 In the subsections below, we introduce four crowdsourced dictionaries by highlighting the specific features that are especially relevant for the treatment of the neological phenomena we are interested in. These dictionaries, which are usually less well-known than traditional dictionaries or, at least, less described, do not fit into the usual categories (such as the ones established by J. Rey-Debove [1971: 19-37] or J. Pruvost
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[2006]) and require detailed explanations. Entries from these dictionaries will be compared to those written by professionals taken from the following sources: • three English dictionaries: The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Macmillan Dictionary (MMD) and the Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture (LDELC). The OED is the dictionary with the most extensive coverage, is very regularly updated and provides fine-grained analyses of polysemy. The MMD and the LDELC are learners’ dictionaries and provide their users with explicit information. The LDELC’s specificity lies in the cultural background it provides users with, which makes it particularly useful when it comes to a precise understanding of the referents and the treatment of connotation in particular. • one French dictionary: the Petit Robert ( PR), a general-purpose, one-volume dictionary, whose online edition is used in this paper to compare the detection of neologisms with what is done by Wiktionnaire (WIKTFR) in section 1.2., and to contrast the definitions given in English and in French for referents which are supposedly identical in section 3. • two term banks: the Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique (GDT) and Termium Plus (TERM), which are two multilingual term banks developed by Canadian institutions (the Office Québécois de la Langue Française for the GDT and the Translation Bureau for Termium Plus), and to which amateur dictionaries will be compared in section 3 for the treatment of some specific terms.
1.1. Main Features of a Selection of Crowdsourced Dictionaries
4 The adjective used to qualify the dictionaries under study needs to be commented upon. The use of the morpheme crowd in crowdsourced is particularly debatable. While the term crowd seems to relate to a massive amount of contributors, the fact is that only a few people contribute on a regular basis (F. Sajous & N. Hathout [2015]). Moreover, the term crowd cannot be applied to some amateur dictionaries written by a single author, such as JargonF. Contrasting collaborative dictionaries with professional dictionaries, on the other hand, would suggest that professional lexicographers do not collaborate. Finally, using the term amateur dictionary only makes sense from the lexicographical competences’ perspective: an author can be an amateur lexicographer, but an expert of the field he is writing about. Let us now briefly present the main features of the four dictionaries under study: Wiktionary, Urban Dictionary, JargonF and Macmillan Open Dictionary.
5 Wiktionary (WIKT) is a dictionary project which relies, just like Wikipedia, on the “wiki principle”: any internet user can edit any entry and each change is published at once. The dictionary claims not to be prescriptive, and intends to collect rare and obsolete words, as well as neologisms, taken from the general language or specific languages, and diatopic (regional and national) variants. The neutral point of view is one of the “imperative and non negotiable” founding principles originating from Wikipedia. Besides the expected elements of the microstructure that are relevant for the study of neology (etymology, glosses, etc.), Wiktionary may use quotes to give implicit hints on connotation and on the semantic features that definitions cannot signal without departing from the neutrality principle (F. Sajous & N. Hathout [2017]). Another element of Wiktionary’s microstructure used to provide additional information is the “usage notes” which can give grammatical information but also correspond to the “word choice” section of some other dictionaries. For instance, the usage note found in definition 1 may not explicitly answer the question “should one say tax avoidance or tax
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avoidance scheme?” but gives some hints on the subtle difference between the two words: 1
(1) The legal exploitation of tax rules to minimize tax payments. Usage notes While tax avoidance, the minimization of tax by careful reading of tax rules, has traditionally been regarded as legal and legitimate, the issue of tax avoidance schemes came into public debate […]. Consequently, some such schemes are considered unacceptable, and may not remove the liability to pay […]
6 The second dictionary under study, Urban Dictionary (henceforth UD), “started as the anti-dictionary, a parody of dictionary.com. Today it’s not just a parody: Parents and teachers use it to understand the next generation” according to its founder Aaron Peckam quoted in Y. Gao [2012]. The way people contribute to it is different from the one used by Wiktionary. It is a cumulative rather than a collaborative system, since any Internet user can add a new entry, or add a new definition to an existing entry, even if that definition does not correspond to an additional meaning. Internet users cannot edit the definitions written by other authors, but can only vote for or against it. For a given entry, the various definitions are displayed according to a decreasing relevance score, which corresponds to the difference between the number of positive and negative votes. UD and Wiktionary are also poles apart regarding their editorial policies: in UD, personal points of view are favored, as explained by A. Peckam: “Every single word on here (sic) is written by someone with a point of view, with a personal experience of the word in the entry”.2 Often labelled a slang dictionary, UD does include “slang” words (in the broadest sense) taken from pop culture and subcultures. It also contains terms from specialized fields such as pseudo-code (computer science), hypernym (linguistics), as well as general language words. As shown by J. Damaso & C. Cotter [2007], UD has also become a sort of entertaining place, where Internet users sometimes create entries for made-up terms, or even an outlet for the frustration of the users who do not hesitate to resort to name-calling, as some complain about. When browsing the dictionary, one is also likely to come across an entry with bawdy references. Finally, some metalinguistic comments are also found there, in which contributors criticize what they consider deviant usage and try to impose or contradict some semantic features, or try to impose or ban the use of some words.
7 Let us now say a few words about the third dictionary under study, JargonF, whose subtitle, “dictionnaire d’informatique francophone”, is more appropriate for the website than its main title, Le Jargon Français. This dictionary, which has been compiled by a computer professional from the University of Rennes, France, since 1994, contains over 15,000 entries. Even though this dictionary provides French definitions for French words, we found it relevant to include it in our study for four reasons. First, a large proportion of French computer science terms are borrowed from English, and it is interesting to see how many of the original semantic features are kept or modified in the French term. Second, there are a number of features that stand out given the fact that there is a single author: the high number of entries, the subtleties of some descriptions which explicitly point to the cases of homonymy or polysemy, the original and up-to-date meanings, and sometimes the deviant usages. Third, this specialized dictionary is technically accurate. Finally, the author’s point of view is always clearly expressed: his own positions are always humorously signaled (for instance he makes it
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clear that he favors freeware or explicitly criticizes the lack of knowledge of most journalists). Comparing JargonF’s (3) and Wiktionary’s (2) definitions of micropayment allows one to better understand the raison d’être of JargonF’s mockery:
(2) (economics) A financial transaction for a very small amount of money [WIKT] (3) [banque]. Paiement d’un montant relativement faible, pas plus d’un neuro (sic) en règle générale. Les systèmes sûrs les autorisant sont rares tellement les banques sont gourmandes : elles voudraient nous faire croire qu’une transaction leur coûte très très très cher... [JargonF]
8 When reading (2), one may wonder why a word was coined for the payment of very small amounts of money and not for higher ones. By blaming a banking practice that seems to him unwarranted, JargonF’s author implicitly sheds light on an additional piece of information: the fact that there is a tax on this type of payment.
9 The last dictionary under study, the Macmillan Open Dictionary (henceforth MMOD), is the crowdsourced dictionary that was launched by Macmillan back in 2009, and which allows Internet users to submit definitions for new entries, which will later be edited by professionals. According to the website, there have been 4,000 additions so far, half of which have been promoted to regular entries. Even though the Macmillan Dictionary (MMD) is not the only professional dictionary that offers a crowdsourced section, the fact that the definitions written by Internet users (and signaled as such) can be accessed through the same search bar as the ones written by trained lexicographers is noteworthy. This is an acknowledgment of the competence of laypersons that goes beyond the one that James Murray – the Oxford English Dictionary’s chief editor – granted the amateurs that participated in his reading program – a sort of avant-garde snail mail crowdsourced lexicography that was launched as early as 1879.
10 Lexicographers from the MMD control the relevance of the entries suggested as additions by Internet users and make sure the writing of the definitions is in line with the dictionary’s editorial policy; as a result, they are able, to some extent, to extend its nomenclature, to shorten the inclusion timespan (just like Wiktionary), to benefit from the diversified expertise of its various contributors (as in a sort of multi-field JargonF), while avoiding UD’s pitfalls.
1.2. Identifying and Recording Neologisms
11 While the automatic detection of formal neologisms is not much considered an issue any more, it seems semantic neology still cannot be dealt with automatically satisfactorily. Even though the former task is easier than the latter, it remains complex. Beyond the technical and methodological difficulties that cannot be detailed here for lack of space, automatic detection depends on the availability of a large and diversified enough diachronic corpus. Moreover, statistical methods make it possible to detect neologisms only a while after they have first appeared (I. Falk et al. [2014]). As mentioned earlier, professional dictionaries cannot be used to detect neologisms (whether they use a diachronic label or not, for that matter). In fact, as underlined by M.-F. Mortureux [2011], it is just the opposite: the lexicalization process is over once a word has been recorded in the dictionary. She also writes that the lexicographic discourse about the new lexeme provides explanations about the way it is integrated into the lexical system by mentioning other lexemes the neologism is now structurally related to. For a
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neologism to be included in Wiktionary, neither the ever-increasing use nor the complete analysis of the word is a prerequisite. A dictionary entry is being published while being built: as soon as a neologism is identified, a webpage including the grapheme and the part of speech is created. The definition, pronunciation, etymology and lexical semantic relations are added later. Such a continuous publication mode fosters the early inclusion of neologisms in such a crowdsourced dictionary. N. Hathout et al. [2014] have shown that Wiktionary covers general-purpose French language quite extensively; not only does its unrivaled nomenclature include rare, technical or obsolete words, but it also covers vocabulary from diversified corpora, which is clearly an advantage over other resources. We wondered if, for English, the discrepancy between crowdsourced and professional dictionaries was the same as for French regarding their nomenclature and the time it takes for a neologism to be included.
12 Our question stems from the difference in evolution between English and French lexicography. While the former started to rely on corpus linguistics quite early and benefited from the collaboration between lexicographers and linguists (some specializing in computational linguistics), both from the private and the academic sectors, the same cannot be said about the latter, as obviously stated in the titles of two of Pierre Corbin’s papers: “La lexicographie française est-elle en panne ?” (P. Corbin [1998]) and “Quel avenir pour la lexicographie française ?” (P. Corbin [2008]). In France, it seems the border between private publishing houses and academic research cannot be crossed, and the somewhat ideological rejection of corpora by some influential linguists3 has had long-lasting effects.
13 For the year 2017, we compared the new entries found in the OED and Wiktionary on the one hand, and the ones found in the online Petit Robert and in Wiktionnaire on the other hand. This comparison can seem disproportionate at first sight. The OED is a multivolume dictionary; with a 600,000-headword nomenclature, it aims at recording the whole lexicon of the English language. The PR is a single-volume dictionary whose nomenclature includes “300,000 words and meanings” (electronic version) or “60,000 words and 300,000 meanings” (paper version). The reader may wonder why we did not use the electronic version of the Grand Robert instead, since it includes “100,000 words and 350,000 meanings”. Unlike the OED whose complete list of new entries is published every time the dictionary is updated4, the Robert publishers only mention a few in occasional press releases. As a consequence, our study is based on the neologisms in the PR that have been manually and carefully identified by C. Martinez [2009], who does so on a yearly basis – which finally turns out to be a better choice for the analysis of neology since it is updated more often than the GR.
14 As for Wiktionnaire and Wiktionary, their nomenclatures have been extracted from GLAWI (F. Sajous & N. Hathout [2015]; N. Hathout & F. Sajous [2016]) and its English equivalent ENGLAWI, two machine-readable dictionaries designed by converting the crowdsourced dictionaries into XML format. As part of a homogeneous treatment, the distinction between simple and compound lexical items only relies on the presence or absence of a blank character within the grapheme. The forms that were taken into account are the lemmas of the lexical words (common nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs); for the OED, we only studied the main entries (without the subentries); finally, we limited ourselves to the PR’s main entries and compounds (and excluded its “hidden” entries). For the year 2017, the number of additions found in Wiktionary is especially high (over 84,000). As a comparison, the average number of additions for
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Wiktionary and Wiktionnaire is the same for the 2006-2016 period: +25,000 without the proper nouns, and +35,000 with them. The differences in the OED / Wiktionary and PR / Wiktionnaire’s coverage shown in Table 1 could be accounted for by the difference in size between the OED and the PR’s nomenclature, or by the fact that the number of new entries in Wiktionary is nine times as high as in Wiktionnaire for 2017.
Table 1: Nomenclature Comparison: New Entries for 2017
Figure 1: Inclusion date: Discrepancy between Professional and Crowdsourced Dictionaries
15 However, how neologisms are detected and selected for inclusion in the French private sector dictionaries is somewhat dubious. Even though M. Sommant [2000] describes this process as methodical for Larousse (for the 1988-2000 period), she also mentions a sort of “neologism hunting process” relying on the lexicographers’ “flair” and “sixth sense”. Since there is no published information other than what is found in the prefaces to the dictionaries and the yearly press releases, only a metalexicographic approach allows us to guesstimate how French lexicographers proceed, and there is no evidence that the methods currently used are more innovative. C. Martinez [2009] has shown that there is no coherent pattern regarding those dictionaries’ updates. What the PR’s press release focuses on is the addition of recent words, such as hackathon, youtubeur, fablab in the “computing and multimedia” category, fixie and aquabike in the sports category, but a closer look at the additions raises a number of questions: why was such word not in the dictionary, and why was it added in 2017? This is the case, for instance, for chamallow, feignasse, dégun, mort-vivant, pogoter, etc. For the words added in
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2017 in the OED (or PR, resp.) and already recorded in Wiktionary (or Wiktionnaire, resp.), we checked for how long they had been recorded in the crowdsourced dictionaries – this is what is summed up in the boxplot found in Figure 1. We can notice that the median period of time elapsed between inclusion in Wiktionary and in the OED is 4 years long, but that it is almost twice as long (7.5 years) when we compare Wiktionnaire and the PR. Another striking fact is that 25% of the words added in the OED in 2017 were recorded in Wiktionary the very same year. The next 25% were recorded with a 1- to 4- year delay. The upper limit of the first quartile of the PR (0-5 year period) is beyond the OED’s median deviation.
16 The maximum deviations (13 and 14) correspond to the time elapsed since the birth of the collaborative dictionary. It would be interesting to check if those deviations are on the rise in the next few years; one can assume that a word added in Wiktionary nowadays is more likely to correspond to a real neologism than a decade or so ago, when the dictionary was catching up on the “core lexicon” while trying to record the then neologisms at the same time. Another interesting study could consist in a qualitative analysis of a sample of those additions in order to identify specific trends in the type of neologism recorded in a given dictionary.
17 As a first conclusion, this study shows that Wiktionary, thanks to the size of its nomenclature and the will of its contributors to rapidly record neologisms in it, can be a useful complementary tool for the OED’s lexicographers. The so-called exclusion corpus – as dictionaries are usually considered – could thus prove to be a very efficient tool for neology watch.
1.3. Motivation Analysis: Spontaneous vs. Planned Neology
18 The linguistic processes underlying “spontaneous” neology have been described, among others, by L. Campbell [1998: 254-279]. We will focus on linguistic planning, i.e. the conscious effort of some speakers to urge a speech community to use new lexical units or to modify existing lexical units. M. T. Díaz Hormingo [2012] focuses on euphemisms and underlines the fact that the typological features that are commonly established to describe them (e.g. the distinction between denominative or referential neology vs. stylistic or expressive neology) are inadequate. For the analysis to be thorough, M. T. Diaz Hormingo considers that the extralinguistic motivations underlying the euphemistic creations need to be examined. To follow suit, we strongly believe that the analysis of motivation should be at the core of the analysis of any neologism analysis, from the moment that the neologism under study is due to language planning. This is something seldom found in professional dictionaries, either for lack of space, or because lexicographers would be faced with expressing their point of view. Turning then to amateur dictionaries can prove useful to answer the following questions: Who initiated the change? What was the change for? Is its motivation hidden or openly displayed, transparent or opaque?
19 When official institutions (such as OQLF in Quebec or DGLFLF in France) are in charge of such language enrichment, by replacing borrowings by lexical creations which are to be published (for instance in the French Journal Officiel), the answer to the three questions is rather straightforward. However, in some cases, language planning goes unnoticed – be it official or not. This is the type of initiative that D. Ager [2001] describes by analyzing both the motivation and the historical context. Language planning can relate
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to the language being used (“discourse”) but also to dictionary-making – D. Ager reminds readers that some dictionaries were compiled on royal request. In a similar vein, D. M. T. C. Farina [2016] quotes the example of a dictionary whose etymological information was deliberately falsified in the pre-Soviet era in order to exacerbate jingoism. In a text entitled “Politics and the English Language” published in 1946, George Orwell warned against the risks of language being manipulated for political purposes: “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought”, with a sense of foreboding about how the language was to be corrupted in the totalitarian regimes of the time. According to A. Krieg-Planque [2012], the book LTI, Lingua Tertii Imperii written by the philologist Victor Klemperer and published in 1947, during the Second World War, was to confirm Orwell’s intuition by describing how the Nazi regime brought a change to the German language and reduced its combinatory possibilities in order to reduce the capacity for collective and individual thought.
20 While these are extreme cases, the linguistic changes initiated by the political and economic powers that D. M. T. C. Farina [2016] calls “Top-Down Linguistic Innovation” are still relevant. The very recent example she gives is the following: when Crimea was annexed by Russia, Vladimir Putin used the word natsional-predatel (“national traitor”) to refer to the Russians that were opposed to the annexation. Historically speaking, this word has been used to talk about those who collaborate with the occupying enemy – the only thing being that there is no foreign enemy currently occupying Russia. It seems rather obvious that Putin is aware of that when he addresses Parliament, but that he relies on the official media to spread the use of the word among the population. According to a paper published by the Washington Post on December 15, 2017, the Trump administration has banned the use of the words vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, evidence-based and science-based at the Department of Health and Human Services. Such censorship is likely to lead to the use of some neological substitutes. On April 15, 2018, in an interview given to the newspaper Mediapart and the TV channel BFMTV, French president Emmanuel Macron tried to convince a journalist to talk about optimisation fiscale while the questions he was asked actually dealt with évasion fiscale.
21 Even though the issue at stake in the three examples we have just mentioned is not exactly the same, such practices – be they a case of discrepancy between the recorded meaning and the way it is actually used, or cases of censorship or euphemism – are likely to spread and to end up in dictionaries when they are updated. Seldom do dictionaries provide an answer to the question: “who coined this phrase / who used a new meaning for that word and why?”, either because it is not part of their editorial policies or because there is no straightforward answer. Once the use of a lexical unit is settled in discourse, its history can be hard to trace. Another difficulty is underlined by D. Ager [2001], who identifies three distinct planning instances: individuals, communities and states. This classification needs to be refined, since some multinational companies sometimes have a state-like behavior, and there now are some supranational organizations, such as the Commonwealth or the EU. Even in the case where the editorial policy allows it, it might be hard to identify who lies behind the neologism and what his/her intention was in coining it. There is one noteworthy exception, though, with the economic migrant entry of the MMD which clearly states who uses this phrase (governments) and why (namely, to distinguish a migrant from a refugee):
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(4) someone who goes to a new country because living conditions or opportunities for jobs are not good in their own country. This word is used by governments to show that a person is not considered a refugee (= someone who has been forced to leave their country for political reasons). [MMD]
22 Such a “departure from lexicographic neutrality”, which S. Atkins & M. Rundell [2008: 427-430] call editorializing, is seldom found in general-purpose dictionaries, and more often in culture-oriented dictionaries such as the LDELC. Using such dictionaries which are originally aimed at language learners could be highly beneficial to native speakers in order to better grasp the meaning and the connotation of a given word and to understand the reasons underlying any linguistic change. In the case of the words migrant / economic migrant / refugee, reading about controversial debates led by journalists5 or about the analysis of metadiscursive statements related to that topic (see L. Calabrese [2018]), who shows that the clarification given in (4) is far from being superfluous. Refusing to use some words that are available or using “the right word” is only seemingly insignificant, since some societal and ideological issues are at stake. The two positions (boycott or use of the recorded meaning) are often found in glossaries written by various groups or individuals with a pedagogical or an activist aim, as explained by A. Krieg-Planque [2012]. Thus, the “petit guide Lutter contre les préjugés sur les migrants” written by the CIMADE6 chose to define the French equivalents of the terms migrant, economic migrant, refugee and exilee in order to help the users use them with full knowledge of the facts.
23 M. Lecolle’s study [2012] focuses on the “sentiment linguistique profane” (which corresponds more of less to folk linguistics), and more particularly on the ability of speakers to detect linguistic change. Searching markers inspired by the ones used by M. Lecolle (i.e. euphemism, not to be confused with, politically correct, newspeak, weasel word, etc.) in UD reveals that the contributors to this dictionary are sensitive to neology and analyze the motivation underlying the changes they have detected. Internet users inform readers about the discrepancies between the recorded meanings and the distorted usages in discourse, and often criticize them. A prime example is the incorrect use of the word semantics when what is at stake is form and not meaning – something named “sémantique blabla” and described by A. Le Draoulec et al. [2014]. One of the contributors describes the word as follows:
(5) The study of the meaning of words. Often misused when quibbling about something someone said. In that context, the statement “That’s only semantics” would be more aptly phrased as “You’re just splitting hairs on word meanings.” [...] The very concept of semantics is frequently disparaged by wishy-washy passive-aggressives who refuse to be accountable for their careless use of language or their deplorable lack of education. [UD, def. #3/7, 2009]
24 The contributor who wrote this definition provides the “real” meaning of the headword (“the study of the meaning of words”) together with the wrong usage that he/she has noticed (“misused”) which he/she blames on some speakers’ lack of knowledge. Such adjusting notes can be used in UD to criticize “lexical manipulations” (see section 2) but also to correct or disprove the semantic features that have been assigned to some lexical units (see section 3).
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1.4. Specialized Neologisms: a Thorny Issue
25 When a formal neologism meets a denotational need due to the existence of a new concept (e.g. e-cigarette), there is no motivation issue at first sight. What remains to be done then is to identify the exact meaning of the neologism. Terminological neologisms, or neonyms, are said to be characteristically monoreferential and unequivocal, semantically stable, with a neutral connotation and no synonym. However, since there is a lot of going back and forth between specialized discourse and the general language, the meaning of terms tends to be altered within various speech communities. One reason for this is that defining terms does not only rest on terminologists: it is often a lexicographer’s task when compiling general-purpose dictionaries. In that case, the issue often raised is that the main difficulty the lexicographer is faced with when describing the term is how to adapt the definitions to the audience, but little is said about how challenging it can be for him/her to grasp the exact meaning of a term. The distinction stated by L. Bowker [2003] between several levels of expertise among the target audience (i.e. true experts, semi-experts and non- experts) may also apply to lexicographers. When a “general” lexicographer’s skills or documentation cannot provide him/her with a satisfactory answer when it comes to deciphering a particularly abstruse neologism, he/she can always turn to experts. We may wonder if this is actually what he/she does, and whether it bears fruit or not. F. Č ermák [2003] suggests finding, beyond the usual documentation, “further pragmatic information about use, clarification, or definition of an item”. H. Béjoint [1998] adds: No amount of context can specify all the semantic features necessary for an adequate definition [...] If one wants to be sure to capture all the semantic traits of scientific or technical words, the only option is to ask specialists of the domain to define them.
26 The level of specialization of terms in some fields, such as diffusion porosity, compression crack or attrition mill in the field of powder metallurgy is such that a lexicographer cannot rely on his/her experience or intuition. Some terms which seem less technical may turn out to be just as hard to define satisfactorily. Since some fields are less technical than others (e.g. comics), some others are intertwined with everyday life (e.g. computing) or since within a given field, some terms are less specialized than others (e.g. hacker vs. code injection in computer security), the lexicographer may do without the help of experts or the analysis of a large enough number of contexts taken from a corpus. The boundary between specialized languages and the general language is often blurred and their intersection provides fertile ground for neology, as shown by I. Meyer & K. Mackintosh [2000]. For instance, when a term is “determinologized”, it can have an additional meaning in the general language, which can also consequently alter the initial specialized meaning. The concepts themselves may also evolve over time, which will induce semantic shifts. Section 3 shows that, in that particular case, to fully understand a word or concept that seems clear at first sight, it might be necessary to first see where it stands within the field’s specific culture before turning to what J. Pruvost [2005], following R. Galisson, calls “lexiculture” (i.e. shared common lexical knowledge). A concordancer or an expert might be insufficient ways to penetrate that specific culture. Conversely, a field or subculture expert may have enough background to define a concept from his/her own field. One of the main features of crowdsourced dictionaries is precisely the diversity of its contributors, as far as training, social and geographical origins, tastes and interests, occupations etc. are concerned. Each
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amateur lexicographer is a potential specialist for a given field. In Wiktionary, this shows through the completeness of the coverage of many technical fields. It is rather different in UD, which is characterized by its militancy and identity-building values. It is occasionally used for “semantic adjustments”, where contributors can disprove some semantic features or connotations wrongly assigned to a headword. Such definitions can be spotted thanks to the pattern: [entry] + negative form of “be”, e.g. “feminists/ lesbians are not man-haters, vegetarians are not elitist”, etc. Some beliefs that are much less ideologically oriented are also discredited: “Integration is NOT the reversal of differentiation”, “longboards are not necessarily longer than freestyle skate-boards”, “Lager is NOT an ale”. These corrections correspond to what contributors perceive as generally agreed societal connotations, or can also be a criticism of the definitions found in some traditional dictionaries – since the latter, as stated by J. Dubois & C. Dubois [1971: 99-104], mirror the cultural norm that is in keeping with the ruling classes’ ideology. UD contributors, who potentially belong to various communities and share values of “fringe cultures”, seem to respond to that “mainstream” ideology through their definitions. However, the spectrum of UD contributors is broad and this offbeat dictionary can itself be considered as a mainstream product. A. Farina [2005] shows how dictionaries still are – intentionally or not – a vehicle for stereotypes, and thus contribute to spreading and reinforcing them, in particular the sexist ones. UD is no exception to that, and even includes self-criticisms, as can be seen in the definition for sexist:
(6) [...] Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender. Urban dictionary is a great example of sexist attitudes and phrases used in culture today. [UD, def. #2/7, 2008]
27 Adjustments can relate in UD to words that are not neologisms (e.g. the previous feminist and vegan examples) or to more recent words. The OED’s update released in March 2018 lists many additions related to gender and sexual identity7 issues, including transgendered. There are 5 definitions for that word in UD, the oldest one going back to 2006. It was actually used to define the word genderqueer by contrast – a word that was first recorded in 2004 in UD and in 2011 in the OED:
(7) Any position in a wide variety of gender identities, spanning the spectrum between male and female. A person who is Genderqueer is not transgendered, though the option is open to transition. Being genderqueer has no bearing on sexual identity or orientation. [UD, def #2/16, 2006]
28 Section 3 will show that such negations are either a response to other existing definitions or a dismissal of the relevance of a semantic feature for a given word (“X is not defined it terms of”).
2. Lexical Manipulations
2.1. Euphemisms: from Political Correctness to Propaganda
29 M.T. Díaz Hormingo [2012] draws a distinction between euphemistic substitutes “that are motivated for both the speaker and the hearer” and those “that are motivated for the speaker but not the hearer”. The former, which could be called “propriety
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euphemisms”, address the need to avoid crude lexical items (linguistic taboos such as the f-word for fuck) or relate to some realities (cultural taboos such as powder room for toilet). The latter aim to disguise reality and to divert the co-speaker’s attention. This is particularly true of examples taken from political speeches, such as the ones picked by E. Crespo-Fernández [2014] in the regional British press. Speaking about issues of misconduct allows a local representative to play down the violence that was perpetrated against night-time revelers in order to preserve his city’s night-time economy. The linguistic processes that are used are varied – understatement, circumlocution, use of the passive voice that suggests no one assumes liability, just like the underlying motivations – from face-saving to deception. Unlike the “propriety euphemisms” mentioned above, which are very likely to be found in a dictionary, the ones on which E. Crespo-Fernández’s study [2014] focuses are only found in discourse and, as a consequence, are seldom described in dictionaries.
30 In Wiktionary, 934 definitions are labelled euphemistic. Among those, 33 are phrased as follows: “the word X”, where X is a synonym of the headword being defined. These are mostly entries which follow the s-word and f-word pattern (27 definitions in total for 18 initial letters). In some cases, the comment “regarded as a vulgar or taboo word” is included in the definition, which explicitly accounts for the need for a substitute. In some other cases, the definitions are phrased as follows: “synonym of X”, most of the time to define a substitute word for WC or toilet; powder room is thus defined as a euphemistic synonym for ladies’ room, which is itself labelled euphemistic and defined as “a public lavatory intended for use by women”. Even though the word being substituted, lavatory, is mentioned in the definition, the reason for which it should be avoided – an implicit cultural taboo that is deemed universal – is not mentioned. However, the so-called universality of that taboo can be discussed, and the use of words such as WC or toilet (and all the more so of ladies’ room) might not be such an issue in some cultures, as noticed by Frank McCourt in his autobiographical novel ’Tis where he writes about being faced with American English as a young Irish immigrant: If you want a WC or a lavatory you have to say bathroom even if there isn’t a sign of a bath there. And no one dies in America, they pass away or they’re deceased and when they die the body, which is called the remains, is taken to a funeral home.
31 The definitions of the above-mentioned euphemisms in a cultural dictionary for learners (LDELC) are also revealing:
(8) powder room: n euph a women’s public TOILET in a theater, hotel, restaurant, big shop etc. [LDELC] (9) ladies room: AmE–n a women’s TOILET – compare GENTS; see TOILET (USAGE) [LDELC]
32 While definition 8 is the only one with a euphemism label, definition 9 has a cross- reference to the usage note for toilet which we only partly copy below:
(10) In British English toilet is generally acceptable, but lavatory and WC (becoming old-fashioned [...]) are also used. Public conveniences is the formal expression [...] these are also called the gents or the ladies. In American English bathroom, restroom and washroom are commonly used for toilet, and john is a common informal word. [LDELC]
33 Despite quite a detailed explanation, some elements are still implicit: toilet is said to be “generally acceptable”, but in which cases is it not acceptable? Should lavatory and WC
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be substituted only because they are old-fashioned? Are the substitutes “commonly used for toilet” in American English used because of the words being substituted are old-fashioned or taboo? A. Krieg-Planque [2007] studies what she calls “les jugements d’euphémisation” (“euphemizing judgment”), which is described as a metadiscursive operation that consists in explicitly referring to a certain type of phrasing as euphemistic – a sort of assessment of the discrepancy between the word and the thing it refers to. Dictionaries, she says, rubber stamp the (objective and universal) existence of that discrepancy. She strongly believes it is the use of a word in a given situation that makes it a euphemism for someone at some point.
34 Adjectives coined by adding the -challenged or -impaired suffixes to adverbs to refer to some handicaps (e.g. visually impaired, physically challenged) are a case of euphemisms where there does not seem to be any discrepancy between the word and the thing it refers to; the only matter at stake is connotation and, in the pattern “the word W is a euphemism for word Y”, saying “for whom” is then optional. The definition for physically challenged in Wiktionary is indeed:
(11) (euphemistic) Having some physical disability; disabled. [WIKT]
35 and the one found in the OED for the headword ’challenged adj. (under ’challenged v.) reads:
(12) euphem. With prefixed adverb, also occasionally forming nouns. a. orig. and chiefly N. Amer. Of a person: disabled or handicapped, esp. physically. [OED]
36 Even though the euphemism status can be perceived as universal, one may wonder why adjectives such as disabled or blind can be considered an issue. There is no clear answer to that question in the dictionary; in just the same way, the extract from the NY Times used as an example in the OED does not provide any explanation for Kennedy’s preference:
(13) 1985 N.Y. Times 20 Apr. I. 26/3 The disabled skiers, whom Mr. Kennedy prefers to call ‘physically challenged’, achieve speeds on difficult runs that would be daunting to most competitors. [OED]
37 Excessive political correctness is sometimes mocked by ironic coinages such as parentally challenged which is labelled euphemistic in Wiktionary and defined as “Lacking one or both parents, or having parents who are inadequately supportive or caring”. Understanding what is proper is not trivial for a learner of another language and culture: faced, just like Frank McCourt, with euphemisms such as pass away or bathroom labelled as euphemisms for die or WC in the dictionary, should learners assume that such words are improper? Nothing in the dictionary allows him/her to decide whether it is the word being substituted which is a taboo word (not labelled as such, but then why would that be a euphemism?) or if it is the referent that relates to a cultural taboo. The expression between jobs, which is more recent than the “universal” ones just mentioned, is defined as follows in three crowdsourced dictionaries:
(14) (euphemistic) Unemployed [WIKT] (15) temporarily unemployed [MMOD, submitted on 09/09/2015]
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(16) A clever and discreet way of saying your unemployed. you’ve had a job, not currently working, but will be working in the near future [UD, def. #1/1, 2007]
38 Once more, there is no explicit explanation as to why the word unemployed should be avoided, even though the definition found in UD seems to imply that one should conceal being unemployed. By reading the answer below to the question “What is the meaning of the phrase ‘in between jobs’?” asked on a forum (quora.com), one can assume that, for unemployed people to look respectable, job-seeking is a prerequisite: [answered 19 Mar 2018 by a former Business Analyst (Retired)] Strictly speaking, the phrase means that the person who says it has recently left a job and is planning to commence another job. It is often used as a euphemism for ’unemployed’, although it would be the truth provided the person who says it is seeking employment.
39 In French, for that matter, personne en recherche d’emploi (“jobseeker”) is a euphemism for chômeur (“unemployed person”). Guilt-inducing social pressure implicitly accounts for the widespread use of that expression, but drawing such an inference does not necessarily immediately spring to mind.
40 “Lexical cosmetics” is the term used by E. Nida [1995] to refer to the fact of using words or phrases in a way where the positive features of the concepts represented by the concepts are highlighted, while their negative features are minimized. The example he gives is pro-life and pro-choice, which are substitutes that are more positive and acceptable than anti-abortion and pro-abortion. It seems to us than there is more to that substitution than a shift from the negative connotation of abortion to the positive connotation of the prefix pro-. Fighting for some values implicitly means depriving one’s opponents of those values, or even associating them with the opposite values. Accordingly, a pro-life opponent is believed to be implicitly anti-life. This is what is in the minds of the Internet users who wrote the following definitions:
(17) A term invented by anti-abortionists to refer to being anti-abortion. Everyone is pro-life you idiot, what you are is anti-abortion. [UD, def. #9/34, 2004] (18) Politically correct label that applies to people who oppose a woman’s right to chose (sic). The choice of words, ’pro-life’, suggests that the people who don’t agree with them are ‘pro-death’ and therefore bloodthirsty babykillers. [UD, def. #12/34, 2004]
41 The definitions found in LDELC for pro-life (19) and pro-choice (20) can be disturbingly implicit: we do find the label euph., but, in the same way as A. Krieg-Planque [2007] asks “for whom is the word euphemistic?”, the reader may ask “which word is the entry a euphemism for?” More explanations are provided in the cultural note for abortion (21), but the extralinguistic reasons that led to the suppletion of anti-abortion by pro-life are not made explicit. The segment “other people are PRO-LIFE or anti-abortion” seems to show that the two expressions mean the same thing, but does not include any contrastive element. Since the dictionary does not have an entry for the second term, the reader has no idea whether it is derogatory or not. Providing information in a very implicit manner (as we have seen in definitions 8 to 21) is very common in dictionaries aimed at adult native speakers; not much so in learners’ dictionaries. According to C. Girardin [1979], the excess of implicit explanations can be considered as censorship, for instance when the reader needs to infer too many elements.
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(19) euph opposed to ABORTION [LDELC] (20) euph favouring ABORTION being available to those who want it. In the US, people who are pro-choice often LOBBY Congress and walk in DEMONSTRATION – compare PRO-LIFE; see also Cultural Note at ABORTION [LDELC] (21) Abortion has been legal in the US since 1973 and in the UK since 1967, although people in both countries have very strong opinion about it. People disagree about whether it should stay legal, and about whether it is morally right. Some people are PRO-CHOICE and believe that a woman has the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. Other people are PRO-LIFE or anti-abortion, and believe that an unborn baby has the right to be born. They believe that abortion is murder. – see also ROE VS. WADE [LDELC]
42 When pushed to its limits, E. Nida’s lexical cosmetics becomes a matter of lexical usurpation with a manipulating purpose. This is what is described by A. Krieg-Planque [2015], who studies frozen structures as a strategy to build authority in discourse. Traces of vocabulary originating from political, economic or managerial newspeak can be found in dictionaries without any critical distance. She provides examples from the socio-political vocabulary which, by being excessively repeated, end up being established and taken for granted, thus making any deviating or opposite ideology invisible.
43 Back in 1946, in Politics and the English Language, Orwell already denounced euphemizing phraseology: Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.
44 The parallel that can be drawn with what was written 66 years later by M.T. Díaz Hormingo [2012] is striking (and stresses the relevance of Orwell’s thoughts): [...] the present economic crisis, the first Gulf war (1991), the sinking of the tanker Prestige (2002), the Iraq war (2003) or certain terrorist attacks have given rise to appearances in the media by public figures having social responsibility coining lexical units such as economic deceleration for crisis, negative growth for decreased productivity, recession for long-lasting serious economic situation, redundancy for mass sackings, price adjustment or revision for price rises, creditors meeting for temporary receivership, allied attack for war, collateral damage for civilian casualties, humanitarian aid for logistical support or military support [...]
45 As far as the military field is concerned, one may compare the definition for collateral damage (missing in the OED) in the MMD, Wiktionary and UD:
(22) ordinary citizens who are killed during a war. This word is used especially by military officers. [MMD] (23) 1. (military, euphemistic) Damage to civilian property or civilian casualties that are the unintended result of military operations. 2. Harm to innocent people that results from policy decisions. 3. Unintended victims of an attack targeted at someone or something else. [WIKT]
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(24) Military slang for the mass murder of civilians through the use of weapons which are known in advance to be imprecise and/or to cause damage across a large area (e.g. cluster bombs). [UD, def #2/10, 2004]
46 The MMD definition is clear, but the word is not presented as a euphemism. In addition to mentioning “mass murder”, the definition found in UD highlights a sense of premeditation (ignoring consequences that can be anticipated). To what extent the three different meanings provided in Wiktionary are distinct or overlapping is quite hard to identify. A euphemistic label can nevertheless be found in the first definition, and, rarely enough in that dictionary, a point of view is clearly expressed in the second one.
47 On a different note, human resources are also a field in which authoritative discourse can be built. Let us now compare the various definitions of restructure / restructuring:
(25) restructure: to organize something such as a company in a different way so that it will operate better. Derived word: restructuring [MMD] (26) restructuring: Literal meaning: to rearrange the structure of something. Real meaning: to sack lots of workers. A euphemism used by bosses to cover up the fact that they’re planning to sack workers or to attack workers in other ways (e.g. worsen pay and conditions). [UD, def #1/1, 2004] (27) restructure: Corporate speak for fire or make redundant. [UD, def #1/2, 2005]
48 UD, taken as a whole, cannot be labelled a militant dictionary. However, definitions such as 24, 26 and 27 show that UD can be considered to some extent as what A. Krieg- Planque [2015] calls a “tool to deconstruct authoritative discourse”.
49 To conclude this section, one may wonder, when telling the difference between two competing lexical units is challenging, whether that difference is linguistic or conceptual. In Wiktionary, the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion when defining the terms is straightforward: the former is legal, unlike the latter. In real life, there is no clear-cut distinction between the two; even though tax avoidance is said to be legal, both practices are fought by the OECD (Working Party 11 is entitled Aggressive Tax Planning8). A usage note in Wiktionary explains the subtle difference between tax avoidance and tax avoidance schemes. The portmanteau word avoison stems from the difficulty to make a distinction between legal and illegal tax schemes. The words used in French are fraude fiscale, évasion fiscale and optimisation fiscale (or even évasion fiscale agressive). The website of the French Economy and Finance ministry includes a note, according to which the terms évasion, optimisation and fraude are closely linked9. It even adds that “unlike fraude, optimisation is legal even if its legitimacy or efficiency may be debatable”; and that “the definition of évasion fiscale is more complex, since it relates both to optimisation and to fraude”.
50 The very existence of linguistic variants and the vague feeling of euphemization felt by the speaker can be due to conceptual fuzziness. In that particular case, it will be difficult for a general-purpose dictionary, whatever its editorial policy, to record and describe accurately such an opaque and unstable reality, except maybe in a note such as the one given in definition 1: if the semantic fuzziness is described as such in the dictionary, the reader will feel reassured and will not blame himself/herself for misunderstanding.
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2.2. Oxymorons
51 Oxymorons are a stylistic device that is most often used in literary texts. They can also be found in humorous utterances which rely on a type of complicity between the speakers (just like for some euphemisms, where the euphemistic process is obvious both for the sender and the receiver). But the advertising and political contexts also provide a breeding ground for terms which seem opposite at first sight but which are very seriously juxtaposed. This is the case, for instance, of the term negative growth which is defined in Wiktionary as follows:
(28) (economics) The opposite of economic growth; economic decline. [WIKT]
52 This definition may seem puzzling; why should one talk about negative growth and not about economic decline or economic decrease? The definition is both antonymous and synonymous: the opposite of economic growth is economic decline, and replacing economic by negative to refer to an opposite is far from being natural. The term is not found in UD; if it was, the definition would most probably include an analysis of its motivation and would show the underlying euphemizing process (“motivated for the speaker but not the hearer”).
53 If we turn to another field, the term SUV (or sport-utility vehicle) can seem bewildering to someone who is not a motor industry connoisseur. First, juxtaposing sport and utility can be considered as an oxymoron (and French speakers, by whom SUV has been borrowed, usually have no idea what the abbreviation stands for). Second, reading the following definitions in the OED or the MMD does not really help understand what makes a SUV different from a traditional four-wheel drive vehicle:
(29) n. orig. and chiefly N. Amer. a four-wheel drive motor vehicle that can be used for recreational off-road driving (abbreviated SUV). [OED, under sport] (30) sport utility vehicle: a four-wheel drive [MMD]
54 The definition found in Wiktionary includes more details but does not provide any answer to the question asked above, and does explain in what ways SUVs are related to sports.
(31) A passenger vehicle which combines the towing capacity of a pickup truck with the passenger-carrying space of a minivan or station wagon together with on- or off-road ability. [WIKT]
55 The definitions found in UD – whose style is very typical of this dictionary – provides the reader with a few useful clues as to why there might be some misunderstandings:
(32) Sport Utility Vehicle. Neither a sport vehicle nor a utility vehicle. A whack, fakeass (and successful) attempt by the motor vehicle industry to lure in overpaid middle class workaholic moms who think that they need a 3 ton vehicle to carry their stupid kids to soccer practice. [UD, def. #1/80, 2003] (33) Gas-guzzling motor vehicle designed for off-road driving while only 5% of SUV owners ever go off road [UD, def. #3/80, 2003]
56 According to the OED, the first occurrence of sport-utility vehicle goes back to 1969. The following evidence was produced some 30 years later, and highlights the polluting feature mentioned in (33):
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(34) 2000 Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey) 4 Jan. 12/3 President Clinton announces a plan to make sport utility vehicles meet the same emissions standards as cars to reduce air pollution. [OED]
57 The definition in Wiktionnaire (35) is very similar to the one found in Wiktionary, but there is also a very telling example, taken from a weekly magazine, about a vrai faux 4x4:
(35) Voiture bicorps initialement tout-terrain souvent à roues motrices dont l’espace utile commun aux passagers et aux bagages est modulable [WIKTFR] (36) “Comme on doit regretter, à Boulogne-Billancourt, de ne pas avoir disposé plus tôt d’un SUV comme le Renault Captur dans la gamme, tant ce vrai faux 4x4 fait un carton !” – (Cristian DAVID, « Renault Captur : le SUV version sourire », L’Express, 26/02/2014)” [WIKTFR]
58 What the expression vrai faux 4x4 (literally “ true-fake 4x4”) actually means is not clarified and relies on assumed mutual understanding with the reader. This term somehow relates to the more explicit definition found in (32): “neither sport nor utility”. We can notice that the factual definition where no point of view is clearly expressed is supplemented by an example that more or less implicitly refers to an additional semantic feature or connotation. This is particularly striking when we compare example (36) with example (37) that was substituted for it on Sept 22, 2017:
(37) Nés pour les loisirs et la famille, les SUV partent aussi à l’assaut des villes grâce à des modèles de poche... Le succès des SUV citadins vient de leur design [...] (L’Argus , consulté le 22 septembre 2017) [WIKTFR]
59 The comment that was left by the Internet user who initiated this substitution mentions he/she found it more interesting because SUV characteristics were mentioned and there was no advertising, unlike example (36) that referred to a specific car brand (Renault Captur). Ironically, the new example presents SUVs in a favorable light, which in itself could be seen as denoting a point of view.
60 H. Béjoint [2015] made the following comment about general dictionaries: Modern DGUs want to be scientific, and they succeed in being impersonal; some would say that they are boring.
61 This comment could very well apply to Wiktionary: by sticking to an editorial policy that will not depart from the neutrality principle, not only could this dictionary be considered “boring” by some, it also fails to provide some essential defining elements. On the contrary, UD can be criticized for its lack of seriousness but the analysis of the motivation of some neologisms that is only found in this dictionary can be a useful supplement to the information found in other dictionaries.
3. Which Experts for the Lexicographic Description of New Specialized Terms and Culture?
62 J.-F. Sablayrolles [2006] uses the term “paléologismes” to refer to lexical items which are not used any longer and which have been coined again by speakers who were not aware of their previous existence, in order to designate a new referent. Conversely, a concept or an object from the real world that already exists may be viewed as new and
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may then be assigned a new designation. In that case, one may wonder if there already was a lexical unit to refer to that reality and, if so, if it perfectly matches the neologism semantically speaking. For instance, spreading rumors or erroneous information is far from being a new practice. But owing to the volume of information circulating through mass media and social networks, to the pace at which it circulates and to its potential consequence (e.g. on the results of an election), speakers have felt the need to coin lexical items such as fake news and post-truth (era). In the same way, but in a different field, bikes without a freewheel system are nothing but new (they were actually initially conceived as such), but the trendy picture of the New York courier has led to massive sales of fixies to numerous hipsters. The French language usually resorts to equivalents created to be used in place of Anglicisms: the term (vélo à) pignon fixe was thus coined when the object it designates was only used by the precursors; when those bikes became “mainstream” – vélo à pignon fixe became the term officially recommended in December 2013 –, the term fixie was then borrowed. However, this type of bike had been known for a long time as fixed-gear bike by professional cyclers, who used it for training or for bike races in velodromes. Then, when hipsters realized that freewheels actually were useful, this device was added to fixies, while the single-speed principle was maintained, for the sake of simplicity and elegance. “Fixies-with-a-newly-freed-wheel ” thus had to be renamed: they became single-gear / single-speed bikes (vélos single-speed in French) – something that did not just spring into existence but that had existed for years before becoming all the rage, before that neologism was coined (and well before derailleurs were invented, for that matter). Through this example, we can see that one of the main issues that need to be addressed when beginning the analysis of neology is the following: is the innovation linguistic or conceptual? Sections 3.1. and 3.2. provide two examples of neologisms whose referents did not exactly exist as such before the lexical units were coined, but whose history is essential to know, together with the culture they belong to, in order to be able to answer the question and to properly define them. The case of hacker, which is analyzed in section 3.3., despite not being a neologism per se today, is a good example of a term with a low level of technicity but a high level of polysemy which has been a challenge for terminologists.
3.1. Graphic novel, Comics, Comic book and Bande dessinée
63 The readers of American comic books, just like the readers of French or Belgian bandes dessinées (BDs) may wonder why, for the last couple of years (or decades for members of the avant-garde), some of these books have been called graphic novels (romans graphiques in French). The three definitions that follow each include a different hypernym or genus proximum: story, comic book and novel.
(38) graphic novel, a full-length (esp. science fiction or fantasy) story published as a book in comic-strip format. [OED, Draft additions 1993 (under graphic)] (39) a novel that uses drawings to tell the story [MMD] (40) (comics) A comic book containing a single full non-episodic story. [WIKT]
64 The OED defines graphic novel as a full story, specifies its physical format (book) and the way the drawings are organized (comic-strip). According to the MMD, it is first and foremost a novel, and the drawings are only used for narration (we cannot tell whether the drawings are used alongside with the text or instead of the text). For Wiktionary, a
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graphic novel is a comic book whose specificity lies in its completeness with no episodes. The contrastive “non-episodic” feature is confirmed when one looks at the definition Wiktionary provides for comic book which includes the term serialized:
(41) (comics) A book or magazine that uses sequences of drawings to tell a story or series of stories, primarily in serialized form, usually fiction. Usage notes Although the name comic book implies that humor is involved, not all comic books are funny. Oftentimes people associate comic books with adventure stories involving superheroes. [WIKT]
65 The usage note included in Wiktionary points to the optional presence of humor in comic books, which is often wrongly perceived as being an inherent quality by the general public. As for the French reader, looking up the term roman graphique in Wiktionnaire could leave him/her feeling dissatisfied:
(42) Bande dessinée ambitieuse s’adressant plus spécialement aux adultes. [WIKTFR]
66 According to that dictionary, the main target audience of romans graphiques is adults. The adjective ambitieuse (“ambitious”), which is rather vague, might be a tentative way of defining it as lacking the humoristic feature which is rightly or wrongly (see definition 41) associated with comic books (and maybe with bandes dessinées).
67 The following definition, taken from UD, seems to imply that comic books are books for adults who will not admit they are somehow immature:
(43) “Graphic Novel” is basically a comic book. Graphic Novel is the term mainly used by adults to make comics seem less childish [UD, def. #2/4, 2005]
68 This definition even seems to suggest that the lexical unit graphic novel does not refer to a new concept but is only a new designation for comic book that erases its juvenile connotation. Another contributor thinks this widespread belief is incorrect, and that the new term actually refers to a particular format:
(44) what hipsters, idiots, and the media use to attempt to sound high brow about reading/discussing comic books, but in reality is a term describing a specific format of comic book. that (sic) form being an over-sized self- contained single original story (as opposed to a typical single issue or collection of old single issues). [UD, def. #3/4, 2012]
69 To conclude, what makes a graphic novel specific: its medium, its format, its completeness or its target audience? As far as the last distinctive feature is concerned, one may still wonder if it is aimed especially at adults (see definition 42) or if the term is nothing but a designation with a favorable connotation used to make comic books sound more legitimate. A quick look at the entry for roman graphique in the French Wikipedia – on which definition 42 is based and from which the contributors borrowed the adjective “ambitieuse” – reveals that it is rather aimed at adults, but that the expression is also used for long bandes dessinées aimed at young people. Adding up the defining elements found in Wiktionary and Wikipedia (“single full non-episodic story” and “ambitieux”, “public adulte”) turns out to be tricky. Since graphic novel literally translates as roman graphique, one may think the concepts are equivalent. But definitions 40 and 42 include comic book and bande dessinée as genus proximum, and these
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two terms are not translational equivalents. Why is it so hard to identify what these books encompass might stem from the fact that there is no real equivalence in the cultural spheres they belong to – a bande dessinée is no comic book, a comic book is no manga, etc. – or rather, the spheres they originate from, since all these types of books are now translated and exported. Leaving linguistics aside to turn to cultural studies proves enlightening. J.-P. Gabilliet, whose main research interest is popular culture and comics, especially in the North American context, draws a list of differences between BDs, mangas and comic books (J.-P. Gabilliet [2009]) and points out that BDs, which he calls a “media culturellement subalterne” (“a culturally subordinate type of medium”) tends to be viewed through exogenous characteristics, unlike mangas and comics, whose designation seems to imply that their contents is not very serious: Si l’expression française « bande dessinée » [...] a le mérite de désigner la forme du moyen d’expression, fût-ce de manière restrictive, ses traductions anglaises (comics) et japonaises (manga, littéralement « images dérisoires ») mettent l’accent sur la nature légère des contenus, donc sur un genre qui serait l’apanage entier et exclusif du moyen d’expression – et pourtant, l’humour n’est depuis fort longtemps qu’un des multiples registres dans lesquels peut s’exercer l’art des auteurs de bandes dessinées.
70 According to J.-P. Gabilliet, the difficulty in defining bande dessinée (and thus roman graphique) in terms of target audience may be accounted for in France and Belgium by the will to bring together several generations in the decades that followed the Second World War. Eliminating the juvenile connotation seems to have gone hand in hand with substituting books to magazines. In Europe, the “respectabilization” of the BD very gradually took place, starting in the 1960s, through this shift in medium. The North- American market is thought to have undergone Europeanization since the beginning of the 21st century when the paperback magazine substituted for the album format imported from Europe, which was believed to be more serious. The use of the term graphic novel could be considered as the ultimate stage of respectabilization. According to J.-P. Gabilliet [2005], it even was Richard Kyle’s objective when he coined that neologism back in 1964 in order to put an end to the negative connotations of the term comics. The commercial industry, Gabilliet writes, got hold of the term to make it a generic designation that would make the object just as culturally respectable as literary novels and extend this respectability to various types of publications. J.-P. Gabilliet concludes his paper by saying that the term graphic novel does not refer to the same thing for connoisseurs or for the book market, the latter distinguishing three different subcategories (to which we have added boldface): Pour critiques et esthètes, le « graphic novel », à l’instar du roman, se conçoit dans la perspective littéraire d’une œuvre produite par un auteur manifestant une démarche créative pleine, entière et autonome. Mais pour le marché du livre aux États-Unis, la catégorie « graphic novel » recouvre en fait trois réalités distinctes : 1) les recueils de bandes dessinées de presse, 2) les recueils de bandes prépubliées dans des comic books grand public (mettant en scène le plus souvent des super- héros ou des types de personnages apparentés), 3) les albums contenant des histoires complètes prépubliées ou non, sans rapport étroit avec les genres grand public et constituant par rapport à ceux-ci une production indépendante.
71 It is rather clear then that a lexicographical description (or several, for that matter) cannot thoroughly render the various subtleties found in that field or the various perceptions of connoisseurs and professionals. Even the most tenacious lexicographer will not be able to take the time, for what seems at first sight to be such a simple entry,
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to lead a comparative analysis of the international history of stories narrated through a series of drawings.
3.2. Hackathon
72 Hackathon is a new OED entry that was published in March 2017, together with hackfest, hackability and hackable. It is missing from the other English dictionaries under study, except the – crowdsourced – MMOD, but can be found in the same year edition of the French PR, which is surprisingly fast. Even though this term belongs to a specialized field (computer science), its low technicity level and the transparent word-formation process that was used to coin it (a blend based on hack and marathon) make it understandable at first sight by any layman. Writing a lexicographical definition for that term can thus seem easy and resorting to an expert may seem unnecessary. The five definitions below, which are taken from French and English professional and crowdsourced dictionaries, seem to tally:
(45) 2. A collaborative computer-programming event, typically lasting several days and involving computer programmers, software developers, hackers, etc.; a hackfest. [OED] (46) An event where programmers and others meet for collaborative software development. [WIKT] (47) an event when computer programmers meet to create computer programs and software applications [MMOD] (48) Événement où des programmeurs se rencontrent pour collaborer au développement de logiciels. [WIKTFR] (49) ANGLIC. Évènement au cours duquel des spécialistes se réunissent durant plusieurs jours autour d’un projet collaboratif de programmation informatique ou, PAR EXT., de création numérique. [PR]
73 The hypernym used at the beginning of the definition is the same in all five cases: event / événement in French. A hackathon thus is an event whose aim is to program, or develop software. As a consequence, a hackathon gathers participants with programming skills: computer programmers (OED and MMOD), software developers and hackers (OED), programmeurs (WIKTFR), and spécialistes (PR). The PR’s lack of specificity leads the reader to assume that spécialistes actually means computer programming specialists. As to Wiktionary, it provides additional information by saying that a hackathon is an event during which “programmers and others” meet.
74 The PR and the OED disagree on the length of the event: for the former, it lasts several days, while for the latter, it typically (but not necessarily) lasts several days. Let us now examine a terminological definition for hackathon:
(50) Rassemblement de programmeurs qui, pendant un ou plusieurs jours, compétitionnent en équipe dans le but de développer des programmes sur un thème ou pour un événement déterminé, à partir de données qui sont mises à leur disposition. [GDT]
75 Two new elements are found in the GDT: there is a competitive side to the event (“les programmeurs compétitionnent”), and the participants have data at their disposal. Even though the team aspect can relate to the collaborative development found in the definitions mentioned above, it is only in the GDT that the idea of competition is
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recorded. According to that dictionary, this event lasts one to several days. Let us now examine the definitions found in UD (51) and JargonF (52):
(51) Having company employees come in and work all night under the guise of innovation and opportunity with little or not reward to ones self for the sole purpose of benefiting the company. Please join us in our hackathon next week we will provide pizza and beer in exchange for you burning yourself out. [UD, def. #1/2, 2011] (52) [réunion] Coding party longue et sans objectif précis, sinon d’améliorer le logiciel. [JargonF]
76 Even though these definitions are informative, they are not necessarily understandable by readers who are not familiar with the culture of software development. What the UD contributor criticizes here is the fact that some companies organize internal hackathons, sometimes at night or over the weekend, and that those “company hackathons” are a means used by the companies to exploit its employees under false (recreational) pretenses. To fully understand this definition, the following questions need to be asked: (i) who organizes hackathons? (ii) what for (more specifically than “to develop software”)? None of the descriptions listed above (i.e. 45 to 50) mentions these defining elements, either for lack of space for encyclopedic developments, or by failing to identify them. Some answers can nonetheless be found in the Wikipedia entry for hackathon: [...] computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, project managers, and others, often including subject-matter-experts, collaborate intensively on software projects.
77 As was the case earlier for the definition of graphic novel, the definition found in Wiktionary (46) was most probably taken from the encyclopedic entry. We finally get to know the identity of the “other” people who collaborate with computer scientists: they are “subject-matter-experts”, an expression whose meaning becomes clearer as one reads the encyclopedic entry further. The various types of hackathons are listed and classified according to their goal (more precisely the type of objective of the project being developed). Hackathons can be motivated simply by “art for the sake of art” – the main objective being for instance to use a particular programming language, but can also have a militant or humanitarian goal: some hackathons are organized in order to design tools for participatory democracy, tools to improve urban traffic, or crisis management tools for natural or health disasters. This allows the reader to gain a better understanding of why “subject-matter-experts” collaborate with software developers, and to know for a fact that the “company hackathons” that are criticized in definition 51 are only one type of hackathon among many others.
78 The definition found in JargonF (52) is very brief and not very specific: the only new element found there is the hypernym coding party. Except for those who are familiar with the programming culture of the eighties and nineties, this term needs to be looked up as well in JargonF by clicking on a hypertextual link:
(53) [réunion] Réunion dont l’objectif est, pour un groupe de personnes participant à projet, de développer en même temps et au même endroit afin de progresser plus vite et/donc de mieux se connaître, pour ensuite progresser plus vite... jusqu’à la coding party suivante. Voir aussi hackathon, sprint, hackfest, install party. [JargonF]
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79 When reading this definition, one may wonder what makes a hackathon different from a coding party. Providing the definitions for install party, copy party and demo party would be necessary here to situate the principle of a hackathon in the history of “programming events or competitions”, but for lack of space, we will only sum up the definitions found in JargonF and enrich them with our own knowledge of the field. Coding party is a generic term which has never left the circle of professional or amateur computer scientists and whose original form was copy party: a gathering of crackers who break into software in order to get an illegal copy. Those copy parties were soon followed by coding competitions (called coding party), which aimed to show one’s programming skills, in the form of multimedia artistic creations, demos, which gave rise to specific gatherings called demo parties. There is a long history behind the notion of hackathon which cannot be documented in a general-purpose dictionary, and one cannot expect a lexicographer to know about coding parties, which would help define hackathon, all the more so as this lexical unit cannot be found in any dictionary but JargonF. However, it still is imperceptibly productive in French: Linux users associations organize install parties during which they help neophytes install the Linux operating system on their computers, and, since programming languages for children were first designed, “coding-goûters” – i.e. parties in which children are fed while learning how to… feed figures into a computer – have been all the rage. If a lexicographer wonders how long a hackathon lasts, whether it is competitive or collaborative, if data are at the users’ disposal or not (none of the answers to those questions being actually a necessary element for a hackathon, as may be deduced from what precedes), who can he/she turn to? All this may seem superfluous or restrictive, as definitions 46 and 48 written by amateurs themselves which mention none of this could lead us to believe. Now, if a lexicographer seeks more semantic information by using a concordancer, his/ her perception will be heavily dependent on the corpus. When reading articles related to hackathons organized by la Quadrature du Net (an advocacy group defending the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet), we understand that those events aim to “provide a framework for political activists in order to optimize, promote and keep track of their actions”.10 On the contrary, the definition found in le Journal du Net, a “leading website for business executives” with a liberal bias, only confirms what was stated in the ones studied above: “un événement lors duquel des équipes [...] doivent développer un projet informatique [...] sur une période limitée, et généralement courte (une journée, une nuit, un week-end)”11. Regarding the participants’ motivation, one can read that “les développeurs y voient un moyen de se tester, sous pression, [...] Mais, outre la gloire et la reconnaissance des pairs, il peut aussi y avoir d’autres récompenses motivantes : de l’argent, des rencontres avec des fonds d’investissement, une place dans un incubateur”. This seems quite far from the idea of political hacktivism. The article does not deal with a particular type of hackathon but its main purpose is to provide a definition of the “hackathon phenomenon”. There is no reference here to a potentially militant motivation, and, if we are to believe Le Journal du Net, the only existing type of hackathon is a “company hackathon”. It is only towards the end of the article that we learn that hackathons “can be” organized for women, for solving water issues or to honor veterans. To conclude, let us mention that hackathons are on the way to becoming a brainstorming method that goes beyond computer science, as shown by an article (found on the website of an association which advocates implementing basic income) devoted to the “Basic Income Hackathon” which took
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place in Finland in March 201612 and aimed to gather and promote ideas and projects related to basic income.
80 The various contexts in which hackathon is used in the sources we have just quoted corroborate what H. Becker [2015: 162] states about specialized lexicographers (which applies all the more so to lexicologists): “Writing definitions for specialized concepts is a challenging task since the data in the corpus may present different opinions.” The corpora presented here do not exactly present different opinions but rather diverging interests. H. Becker [2015: 162] adds that “in addition to consulting the corpus data, specialized lexicographers may also turn to subject field expert for guidance”. But for such a borderline case (neither general nor very specialized), which expert could a lexicographer turn to? Who could consider him/herself “hackathon expert”? One last resort might be browsing through Wikipedia, whose reliability can be questioned. The entry dedicated to hackathon was created on May, 28 2005 and has been enriched since; it includes the various characteristics of hackathons mentioned in the corpus extracts and definitions studied above.
3.3. Hacker
81 In the previous section, we mentioned that the word-formation process that led to the term hackathon could easily be identified since it was a (transparent) blend of hack and marathon. This, actually, could be considered as a sweeping assertion and needs further explanations. In the OED, the entry hack includes 7 homonyms for the noun – most of which are polysemous, and only 2 of which relate to computer science – and 6 for the verb (only one of which is related to computer science). Bringing this diversity of meanings to mind seems necessary to account for the confusing terminological and lexicographical definitions of hack (noun and verb) and hacker in English, and the even more confusing definitions of the French lexicalized borrowings hackeur (N) or hacker (which can be a N or V, which implies a change in the way it is pronounced). Nowadays, even though the way individuals picture it may vary, the term hacker is part and parcel of our collective imagination, and could be considered as belonging to the general language. In that case, its presence in a term bank may be questioned. But if one thinks about the field of IT security and its rules, the need for a precise definition for hacker can be felt: which ones of his/her acts are considered criminal?
82 There are several records (which are not copied here for lack of space) for the term hacker in the GDT and Termium term banks, and the most frequent defining elements are the same as those found in general purpose dictionaries: presence of malicious intent or not, level of competence (is a hacker skilled or just opportunistic?), use of a systematic or of a random empirical method (is a hacker smart or tedious?). According to the GDT, a hacker-bidouilleur acts randomly. Term banks include fuzzy statements or even internal contradictions, as is the case in Termium Plus, in which one learns that a hacker “utilise ses connaissances techniques étendues” and is “un programmeur créatif”, but also that the confusion about that term leads one to believe that such a person must be gifted, which is not necessarily the case since any patient, tenacious person with enough information can easily break into a computer system13.
83 Here is how the verb hacker is defined in the French general-purpose dictionary PR:
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(54) ANGLIC. Pirater (un système, un compte informatique) par jeu, goût du défi sans intention de nuire. Le site du ministère a été hacké. [PR]
84 The definition states that people can hack with no malicious intent (“sans intention de nuire”), but there is a blatant contradiction in the example provided: whether classified information was stolen from the ministry’s website or modified, or whether the website was crashed obviously results from a malicious behavior. M. Rogers [2013], who studied the thorny issue of defining hacker, asserts that a distinction needs to be made between crackers and crashers. Classifying hackers into subtypes has revealed that “many other sub-categories of hacker with various labels and even a so-called hacker definition controversy about the “true” meaning of this core term either as benign (as in the original sense of a knowledgeable computer enthusiast) or malign (as in Data Security and in the media).” In French, the etymological information provided by the PR for the headwords hackeur and hackathon just add to the overall sense of confusion: they both refer to the same English etymon, the verb hack, but with two very different translations:
(55) hackeur : 1984 ⋄ mot anglais, probablt de to hack au sens argotique de « perdre son temps » [PR] (56) hackathon : 2010 ⋄ mot-valise anglais, de (to) hack « être passionné d’informatique » et (mar)athon [PR]
85 Even though a hacker necessarily is a computer science fanatic (a “passionné d’informatique”), hack cannot translate as being a computer science fanatic as suggested in (56). Moreover, the meaning found in (55) (to waste one’s time) could correspond to the phrasal verb hack around, but not hack, and certainly cannot be the best explanation for what can be paraphrased in French as marathon de programmation. Finally, it is unfortunate that the noun hack is nowhere to be found with its computer science meaning – be it in the PR or in the term banks (in which the only meanings recorded are “cheval” and “taillade”). A possible translation in French could be bidouille, with which either the positive connotation of astuce (= clever technical trick) or the negative connotation of rustine (= kludge) can be associated, as clearly stated in JargonF’s entry for bidouille:
(57) 1. « La bidouille ». Programmation pas du tout robuste, crado, pas documentée, mais qui fonctionne, parfois. 2. « Une bidouille ». Petit bout de programme, petite réalisation technique, permettant d’obtenir des résultats avec peu de moyens. [JargonF]
86 The very existence of two connotations that are poles apart could account for the hesitancy in portraying a hacker either as a methodical expert or as somebody that resorts to empirical trial and error methods.
87 Lastly, let us now examine the two definitions for hacker found in UD, which successfully gather all the semantic features and connotations usually associated with the term:
(58) An individual capable of solving complex non-intuitive problems in a seemingly intuitive manner. The processes and techniques used are not necessarily methodical to the observer, but yet achieve results significantly and consistently faster than known experience would predict. A hacker is not defined in terms of intention or purpose, but rather by the talented
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single-mindedness of method. Hackers are not limited to computer hacking. Commentary: The movies “Tron” (1982) and “War Games” (1983) significantly influenced the common use of “hacker” (by non-hackers) in reference to computer hackers. [...] [UD, def. #5/84, 2006] (59) Back in the 70’s, hacker was a term given to those fortunate enough to know how to code. During the 80’s and 90’s it was a term meant for those who worked their way through systems, without approval. Now, its meaning has been completely replaced by cracker, and hacker means nothing more than any idiot that can decipher a small page of HTML. Those who are computer illiterate still widely use the word in its 80s/90s sense. [...] Of the 80s/90s version, there were three primary denominations: The casual Hacker-hacks to learn information for his own curiosity. The White Hat Hacker-hunts down and destroys malicious code. The Black Hat Hacker-designs and releases malicious code;gathers dangerous information;brings down sensative systems (sic) [...] [UD, def. #6/84, 2005]
88 Definition 58 first reminds the users that, unlike what was captured by the collective imagination based on the movie War Games, the term does not necessarily relate to the field of computer science. It then explains that even though the method used by the hacker does not seem methodological, it might only be a matter of perception on the observer’s part. The last clarification introduced by (58) is that the term hacker should not be defined based on his/her goal, which puts an end to the debate over his/her potentially malicious intents. Definition 59 provides an account of the evolution of the meaning of the term over the last decades, presents the casual / black hat / white hat classification (in which objectives can be mentioned, but only to show how diverse they can be) and alludes to the wrong, obsolete, usage of the term among computer illiterates.
89 Hacker and hackathon each have a story of their own. Hacker might be in the process of having its connotation changed, just like the one analyzed by A. Galinsky et al. [2003] for geek. Such a change results from “in-group planning” but is also a case of spontaneous neology. On the one hand, geeks which have started calling themselves geeks prevent other people from using that term with a negative connotation (another example of reappropriation of a stigmatizing label is the word gay). On the other hand, the “dot-com revolution” and the picture of the Silicon Valley billionaires closely associated with it have made “the link between computer aptitude and economic success” rather obvious. Being able to climb up the social ladder – be it symbolically or for real – now is one essential semantic feature, but the “social skills deficiency” geeks are traditionally characterized by should not be left apart. The teenage genius from War Games has gained a professional status. The respectable reputation of hackathons (or at least of “company hackathons”) could play a part in improving the connotations of the term hacker further. Analyzing the partial semantic or connotational shift of this term that has made its way into the general language at the same time as computer science became part of our everyday life could be an opportunity to look back at the original meaning of the term and how it has evolved.
Conclusion
90 The main objective of this paper was to show how crowdsourced dictionaries complement professional dictionaries, and to which extent, through the filter of
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neology. The emphasis has been in particular on some kinds of neological phenomena which are especially convincingly treated in crowdsourced dictionaries.
91 Another objective of this paper was to shed light on the potential of amateur dictionaries for the study of neology – not by casting doubt on the usefulness of corpus linguistics or questioning the lexicographical descriptions of professional dictionaries, but rather by proving how this particular type of dictionary can be viewed as complementary tools in many respects.
92 As far as neologism detection is concerned, Wiktionary could undermine the consensual idea that a neologism is a lexical unit which has not been recorded in a dictionary yet: due to its editorial policy and the high number of contributors on the lookout, its nomenclature is nonstandard, and new terms are granted an entry in record time. Instead of being used as a traditional corpus of exclusion, Wiktionary could then act as the opposite end of the spectrum, i.e. as a tool for neology watch.
93 As far as the description of the semantic features of a neological unit is concerned, since the boundaries between the general language and specialized languages, between general culture and subcultures are often blurred, it may rely both on a lexicographical and a terminological approach. The type of expertise required is not only technical or scientific: knowledge of the very culture of the field is also needed. Owing to the wide range of professional and cultural backgrounds found among the Internet users and contributors, amateur dictionaries cover a vast array of specialized fields. This is the case for Wiktionary, but even more so for specialized amateur dictionaries such as JargonF. Not only does that dictionary provide precise definitions of the most technical terms, it also gives information on what R. Charnock [1999] calls “vague and indeterminate terms”, which are used to designate “fundamentally fuzzy concepts”. Providing new insights into that “conceptual fuzziness” sometimes requires introducing a point of view – such as the short comments found in JargonF –, which is not standard practice in more conventional resources.
94 Finally, amateur dictionaries prove useful regarding (spontaneous or planned) semantic neology, where the new meaning of a lexical unit is contrasted with its original meaning. The latter can best be found in traditional dictionaries. However, when a speaker notices a striking difference between what he/she has just read or heard and what is recorded in a traditional dictionary, he/she may turn to a crowdsourced dictionary where he/she will find examples of prescriptive metadiscourse written by contributors who criticize the “wrong” use of a term, which they blame on the (other) speakers’ lack of linguistic knowledge. When using Urban Dictionary, they can also have access to “deviant” meanings due to lexical manipulations, whose motivation is analyzed by the contributors. Could this unique dictionary, which may be labelled a “sense-checking tool”, deter us from entering a “post-semantics era”?
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BÉJOINT Henri, 1998, “Scientific and technical words in general dictionaries”, International Journal of Lexicography, 1, n° 4, 354-368.
BOWKER Lynne, 2003, “Specialized lexicography and specialized dictionaries”, in VAN STERKENBURG Piet (ed.), A Practical Guide to Lexicography, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 154-164.
CALABRESE Laura, 2018, « Faut-il dire migrant ou réfugié ? Débat lexico-sémantique autour d’un problème public », Langages, 210, n° 2, 105-122.
CAMPBELL Lyle, 1998, Historical Linguistics. An Introduction, Cambridge: MIT Press.
ČERMÁK František, 2003, “Source materials for dictionaries”, in VAN STERKENBURG Piet (ed.), A Practical Guide to Lexicography. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 18-25.
CHARNOCK ROSS, 1999, « Les langues de spécialité et le langage technique : considérations didactiques », ASp, 23-26, 281-302.
CORBIN Pierre, 1998, « La lexicographie française est-elle en panne ? », Cicle de Conferències 96-97, Lèxic, corpus i diccionaris, Barcelona, 83-112.
CORBIN Pierre, 2008, « Quel avenir pour la lexicographie française ? », Actes du Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française, Paris, 1227-1250.
CRESPO-FERNÁNDEZ Eliecer, 2014, “Euphemism and political discourse in the British regional press”, Brno studies in English, 40, n° 1, 5-26.
DAMASO John & COTTER Colleen, 2007, “UrbanDictionary.com. Online dictionaries as emerging archives of contemporary usage and collaborative lexicography”, English Today, 23, n° 2, 19-26.
DÍAZ HORMINGO María Tadea, 2012, “Lexical creation and euphemism: Regarding the distinction Denominative or Referential Neology vs. Stylistic or Expressive Neology”, Lexis, 7, 107-120.
DUBOIS Jean & DUBOIS Claude, 1971, Introduction à la lexicographie : le dictionnaire, Paris: Librairie Larousse.
FALK Ingrid, BERNHARD Delphine & GÉRARD Christophe, 2014, “From Non Word to New Word: Automatically Identifying Neologisms in French Newspapers”, Proceedings of the 9th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2014), Reykjavik, 4337-4344.
FARINA Annick, 2005, “Lexicographie et discrimination”, Corso on line - Introduzione agli studi di genere: https://www.cirsde.unito.it/it/formazione/corso-line-introduzione-agli-studi-di-genere/ moduli-di-secondo-livello/linguaggi-e
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FARINA Donna M. T. Cr., 2016, “Lexical change in times of upheaval and war - and the dictionary”, Proceedings of the 17th EURALEX International Congress, Tbilisi, 767-776.
GABILLIET Jean-Paul, 2005, « Du comic book au graphic novel : l’européanisation de la bande dessinée américaine », Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative, 12, 35-40.
GABILLIET Jean-Paul, 2009, « BD, mangas et comics : différences et influences », La Revue, 54, n° 2, 35-40.
GALINSKY Adam, HUGENBERG Kurt, GROOM Carla & BODENHAUSEN Galen, 2003, “The reappropriation of stigmatazing labels: Implications for social identity”, Identity Issues in Groups (Research on Managing Groups and Teams), 5, 221-256.
GAO Yongwei, 2012, “Online english dictionaries: Friend or foe”, Proceedings of the 15th EURALEX International Congress, Oslo, 422-433.
GIRARDIN Chantal, 1979, « Contenu, usage social et interdits dans le dictionnaire », Langue française, 43, 84-99.
HATHOUT Nabil & SAJOUS Franck, 2016, “Wiktionnaire’s Wikicode GLAWIfied: a Workable French Machine-Readable Dictionary”, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2016), Portorož, 1369-1376.
HATHOUT Nabil, SAJOUS Franck & CALDERONE Basilio, 2014, “GLÀFF, a Large Versatile French Lexicon”, Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’14), Reykjavik, 1007-1012.
KRIEG-PLANQUE Alice, 2007, « Souligner l’euphémisme : opération savante ou acte d’engagement ? Analyse du « jugement d’euphémisation » dans le discours politique », Semen, 17.
KRIEG-PLANQUE Alice, 2012, « Dictionnaires, glossaires et lexiques militants : pratiques profanes de la critique du langage politique », in AUBRY Laurence & TURPIN Béatrice (eds.), Victor Klemperer. Repenser le langage totalitaire, Paris: CNRS Éditions, 299-313.
KRIEG-PLANQUE Alice, 2015, « Construire et déconstruire l’autorité en discours. Le figement discursif et sa subversion », Mots. Les langages du politique, 107, 115-131.
LE DRAOULEC Anne, PÉRY-WOODLEY Marie-Paule & REBEYROLLE Josette, 2014, « Glissements progressifs de ‘sémantique’ », Le Discours et la Langue, 6, 109-126.
LECOLLE Michelle, 2012, « Sentiment de la langue, sentiment du discours : changement du lexique, phraséologie émergente et ‘air du temps’ », Diachroniques, 2, 59-80.
MARTINEZ Camille, 2009, « Une base de données des entrées et sorties dans la nomenclature d’un corpus de dictionnaires : présentation et exploitation », Études de linguistique appliquée, 156, 499-509.
MEYER Ingrid & MACKINTOSH Kristen, 2000, « L’étirement du sens terminologique : aperçu du phénomène de la déterminologisation », in BÉJOINT Henri & THOIRON Philippe (eds.), Le sens en terminologie, Lyon : Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 198-217.
MORTUREUX Marie-Françoise, 2011, « La néologie lexicale : de l’impasse à l’ouverture », Langages, 183, n° 2, 11-24.
NIDA Eugene, 1995, “Lexical cosmetics”, in KACHRU Braj B. & KAHANE Henry (eds.), Cultures, Ideologies, and the Dictionary. Studies in Honor of Ladislav Zgusta, Tübingen : Niemeyer, 69-72.
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PRUVOST Jean, 2005, « Quelques concepts lexicographiques opératoires à promouvoir au seuil du XXIe siècle », Études de linguistique appliquée, 137, n° 1, 7-37.
PRUVOST Jean, 2006, Les dictionnaires français ; outils d’une langue et d’une culture, Paris : Ophrys.
REY Alain, 1995, « Du discours au discours par l’usage : pour une problématique de l’exemple », Langue française, 106, 95-120.
REY-DEBOVE Josette, 1971, Étude linguistique et sémiotique des dictionnaires français contemporains, Paris-La Haye : Mouton.
ROGERS Margaret, 2013, “What is a ‘domain’ and is this a useful question?”, Asp, 64, 5-16.
SABLAYROLLES Jean-François, 2006, « La néologie aujourd’hui », in GRUAZ Claude (ed.), A la recherche du mot : De la langue au discours, Limoges : Lambert-Lucas, 141-157.
SABLAYROLLES Jean-François, 2008, « Néologie et dictionnaire(s) comme corpus d’exclusion », in SABLAYROLLES Jean-François (ed.), Néologie et terminologie dans les dictionnaires, Paris : Champion, 19-36.
SAJOUS Franck & HATHOUT Nabil, 2015, “GLAWI, a free XML-encoded Machine-Readable Dictionary built from the French Wiktionary”, Proceedings of the eLex 2015 conference, Herstmonceux, 405-426.
SAJOUS Franck & HATHOUT Nabil, 2017, « Informativité, neutralité et point de vue dans une offre dictionnairique hétérogène : vers une complémentarité ? », Revue française de linguistique appliquée, XXII, n °1, 27-39.
SAJOUS Franck, HATHOUT Nabil & CALDERONE Basilio, 2014, « Ne jetons pas le Wiktionnaire avec l’oripeau du web ! Études et réalisations fondées sur le dictionnaire collaboratif », Actes du 4e Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française, Berlin, 663-680.
SAJOUS Franck, JOSSELIN-LERAY Amélie & HATHOUT Nabil, 2018, « Définir la néologie terminologique dans les dictionnaires généraux : le domaine de l’informatique analysé par “les foules” et par les professionnels... de la lexicographie », 4ème Congrès international de néologie des langues romanes (CINEO 2018), 4-6 juillet 2018, Lyon, France.
SOMMANT Micheline, 2000, « Innovation lexicale : sources des néologismes, normalisation et intégration dans les nomenclatures des dictionnaires de langue français », in BÉJOINT Henri & THOIRON Philippe (eds.), Le Sens en terminologie, Lyon : Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 247-260.
Dictionaries
GDT – Le Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique [www.granddictionnaire.com]
JargonF – Le Jargon Français, dictionnaire d’informatique francophone [jargonf.org]
LDELC – Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture, 2nd edition (1998)
OED – Oxford English Dictionary [www.oed.com], paid access
PR – Petit Robert de la langue française [pr.bvdep.com], paid access
MMD Macmillan Dictionary [www.macmillandictionary.com]
MMOD – Macmillan crowdsourced Open Dictionary (part of MMD)
TERM – Termium Plus, The Government of Canada’s terminology and linguistic data bank. [btb.termiumplus.gc.ca]
UD – Urban Dictionary [www.urbandictionary.com]
WIKT – English Wiktionary [en.wiktionary.org]
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WIKTFR – Wiktionnaire (the French language edition of Wiktionary) [fr.wiktionary.org]
NOTES
1. All online dictionaries were consulted in May 2018, unless otherwise specified. 2. StreetSmart: UrbanDictionary. New-York Times, July 5 2009. 3. When speaking about the philological approach used for the Trésor de la Langue Française and then for the Collins Cobuild, A. Rey [1995] talks about the “scientistic frenzy of machine-readable corpora that can be found in Great-Britain especially” (our translation). 4. http://public.oed.com/the-oed-today/recent-updates-to-the-oed/ 5. See for instance the article “The readers’ editor on... the semantics of migration” published in The Guardian (08/16/2015), Al Jazeera’s article “Why Al Jazeera will not say Mediterranean ‘migrants’” (08/20/2015) or the one published by the Italian radiostation LifeGate entitled “Don’t call them migrants, call them refugees” (09/29/2015). 6. A French association supporting foreigners, especially regarding their legal rights. 7. See http://public.oed.com/the-oed-today/recent-updates-to-the-oed/march-2018-update/ reelase-notes-formal-language-sexuality-gender-identity/ 8. OECD’s work on Aggressive Tax Planning: http://oecd.org/tax/exchange-of-tax-information/ atp.htm 9. Evasion, fraude, optimisation fiscale : quelles différences ? www.economie.gouv.fr/facileco/evasion- fraude-optimisation-fiscale 10. https://wiki.laquadrature.net/Hack-a-thon1_Political_Memory_2.0 11. Hackathon : les clés pour comprendre un phénomène qui prend de l’ampleur, 23/06/2014 www.journaldunet.com/solutions/emploi-rh/hackathon.shtml 12. “Finlande - Le Hackathon ouvre la voie à une expérimentation du revenu de base”, 18/03/2016 www.revenudebase.info/2016/03/18/finlande-hackathon-experimentation-revenu-de-base/ 13. « la confusion laisse à penser qu’un tel individu doit être talentueux et brillant, ce qui n’est pas nécessairement vrai puisqu’il suffit de bénéficier de renseignements suffisants et de faire preuve de patience et de persévérance pour pénétrer un système ». Termium Plus, hacker (fiche 1).
ABSTRACTS
This paper shows how amateur dictionaries, through their distinctive features (shorter inclusion timespan, analysis of the motivation, broad spectrum of expertise among the contributors) can complement professional dictionaries for the treatment of neologisms.
Cet article montre comment les dictionnaires amateurs peuvent, par leurs caractéristiques complémentaires (rapidité d’inclusion, analyse de la motivation, diversité de l’expertise des contributeurs) compléter les dictionnaires professionnels dans le traitement des néologismes.
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INDEX
Keywords: semantic neology, lexical creations, lexicography, folk linguistics, motivation, subcultures, lexical competition, Urban Dictionary, Wiktionary Mots-clés: néologie sémantique, créations lexicales, lexicographie, sentiment linguistique profane, motivation, cultures spécialisées, concurrence lexicale, Urban Dictionary, Wiktionary
AUTHORS
FRANCK SAJOUS CLLE-ERSS (CNRS & Université de Toulouse 2) [email protected]
AMÉLIE JOSSELIN-LERAY CLLE-ERSS (CNRS & Université de Toulouse 2) [email protected]
NABIL HATHOUT CLLE-ERSS (CNRS & Université de Toulouse 2) [email protected]
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Gender-biased neologisms: the case of man-X
Océane Foubert and Maarten Lemmens
Introduction
Gender is repeatedly discussed in various areas these days, and in particular in the (social) media, and new trends need to be addressed and named.1 In fact, the current increased (and still increasing) gender-awareness is accompanied by the appearance of gendered coinages, such as bromance (bro + romance), girlboss, manbun or ShEO (she + CEO). 2 This article presents a semantic analysis of one specific type of such gendered coinages that we will refer to as “man-neologisms” since they all follow the formal template man-X, combining the lexeme man with another lexical item (or part of a lexical item, in the case of blends), such as man bun, mancation or manspread. The term “neologism” will be used in this paper regardless of the degree of diffusion of the lexemes. Analysing the meaning of man-neologisms presents the perfect opportunity to capture the current gender discussion, at least for English. More specifically, for this study (based on Foubert [2018]), we have analysed the semantic structure of 1,403 such man-neologisms. As detailed below, our study reveals that man in these coinages only rarely carries a generic meaning (referring to human beings in general, as in man is mortal) but mostly has a gender-specific meaning (“of, or related to, men”). Our analysis of the meanings of these man-specific neologisms shows that they are gender specific as they mainly designate domains which are typically associated with women. Moreover, our analysis reveals four underlying motivations for coining man-neologisms: (i) the (re)appropriation of domains which are typically associated with women, as in man purse (a purse for men), (ii) the reinforcement of differences, such as man cave (a room for men only), (iii) the confirmation of stereotypes, as in man science (a branch of knowledge available to men only), (iv) and naming undesirable male behaviours, mainly in an attempt to change them, such as mansplain (men explaining things to women in a condescending way). Furthermore, our frequency-based diffusion analysis (based on the iWeb corpus) reveals that man-
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neologisms aiming at the reappropriation of domains, and more particularly, those naming undesirable male behaviours are less likely to be coined but more inclined to be diffused, as opposed to neologisms reinforcing differences and confirming stereotypes. Concerning the formal side of these neologisms, as the examples above show, two main types were found, blends and compounds. While there is a clear difference between the two processes in terms of productivity, we will not make this distinction in our analysis, since the current study does not aspire to determine the productivity of the word formation process itself, but to uncover the (semantic-pragmatic) motivations that underlie these coinages. The article is structured as follows. Section 1 below briefly presents the linguistic literature on gender focusing on the representation of gender in language (male generics) as well as the literature on neologisms. In Section 2, we will present the methodology and data underlying the current study. Section 3 gives the main results of our two qualitative investigations on the meanings of man-neologisms. Finally, Section 4 gives the main results of our quantitative study on the diffusion of these neologisms. In the conclusion, we present a short summary of our findings and sketch avenues of further research.
1. Gender and language
1.1. Gender and language studies
Linguistic research on gender can be divided into two main categories: (i) studies on the representation of gender in language and (ii) studies of differences in language use and conversational behaviour as depending on the sex of the speaker. While the latter has been repeatedly discussed in the past century, taking the form of discourse analysis (Haas [1944]; Lakoff [1975]; Tannen [1990]), only recently has the former been the object of more systematic corpus-based studies (see, e.g., Schmid [2003]). Research focusing on the representation of gender in language has also been addressed in a contrastive linguistic perspective (e.g., Hellinger & Buβmann [2001], [2002], [2003], [2015]). A widely spread practice found across languages is the use of male generics, which is the subject of numerous discussions. Male generics, also referred to as generic masculines for languages with grammatical gender, correspond to the use of male forms to describe both men and women. For example, in English, it is possible to use the pronoun he (and its variants) to refer to both women and men or when the sex of the person referred to is unknown, as in an American drinks his coffee black (Hellinger & Buβmann [2003]). This practice is not constrained to pronouns. For instance, in French, masculine forms of nouns are used to refer to both men and women or when the sex of the referent is unknown, as in habitants (m.pl) ‘inhabitants’ or enseignants (m.pl) ‘teachers’. In the feminist literature, this practice is interpreted as men’s construal of gender-biased language to reinforce their superiority and women’s invisibility, as the male form is used as the norm (see Spender [1980]). The feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s did not react so much to the use of male generics, but rather encouraged women to become active in the language process by coining woman- centred words to name their experiences, such as sexism, sexual harassment and patriarchal.
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More recently, the use of male generics has been addressed in the movement for gender-fair language (a.k.a. gender-neutral or inclusive language), which promotes the use of alternative forms to male generics, but also gender-marked words in general. For example, singular they is used more and more as the generic pronoun and so are gender-neutral words such as police officer or cabin crew instead of policeman or steward(ess). In addition, there are recent initiatives discouraging language that might cause offence to the LGBTQI community; for this reason, the use of gender-neutral terms, such as parent, is encouraged over exclusionary expressions such as mum and dad. In the case of languages with grammatical genders, such as French, when the referent’s sex is unknown or includes both men and women, one can use so called inclusive forms, where both genders are simultaneously marked. For instance, if one wants to refer to both male and female students, the inclusive form étudiant.e.s (m.f.pl) ‘students’ is often used instead of the generic masculine form étudiants (m.pl). Often, this only works in orthography. The use of gender-fair language is encouraged by prestigious institutions, such as UNESCO, but the degree of institutionalisation of these forms can greatly vary across countries and languages (Sczesny et al. [2016 ]). Nevertheless, this approach reveals the awareness of gender representation in language. Moreover, various studies addressing male generics have questioned this generic aspect. Recently, the idea of language as male-biased has received empirical support, as studies show that male generics are not understood as generics but as man-specific, subsequently influencing mental representations (see Stahlberg et al. [2007] or Sczesny et al. [2016] for a comprehensive overview). For example, studies have investigated words designating professions – an oft-cited characteristic of male and female differences – and have found that children and adults associate professions with a specific gender, depending on the grammatical form of job titles, which suggests that linguistic forms do influence mental representations (Chatard et al. [2005]; Gaucher et al. [2011]; Vervecken et al. [2013]. For example, Chatard et al. [2005] show that the use of the masculine generic in French instead of a more neutral form to name occupations affects girls’ perceptions of these occupations. Despite the growing literature on gender and language, which focuses on male generics and advocates language change, few studies have investigated more recent gender-driven usage of language. One of these is the recent tendency to coin gendered words and the current article reports on one kind of such coinages, “man-neologisms”, a study which provides valuable insights to the representation of gender in English.
1.2. On the significance of analysing neologisms to study gender and language
The tendency to coin gendered words in the current context of gender-awareness provides valuable insights into the representation of gender in English. As Schmid [2016: 69] – our emphasis – states: [N]ew words are continually being added to the lexicon, generally because new objects are being invented and new ideas are arising, all requiring a designation. In addition, words which are not strictly speaking ‘required’ for naming purposes are created to encapsulate new trends and social practices. In other words, the need for new words highlights the social dimension of language. With respect to newly created gendered words, they not only aim at describing a new
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‘reality’ to be shared with others, but they also address the social issue of gender and its current depiction in language. More remarkably, gendered coinages reveal a gap between institutions and usage. While the growing linguistic literature on gender shows how problematic gendered language is – hence encouraging language change through the use of neutral forms – the new coinages may appear in contradiction with this call for neutralisation, as they build on lexemes such as man, mum, she, he, guy, bro, or girl to build new words. This article aims at providing a more detailed semantic analysis of one of these, viz. coinages using man as their first element, such as man bun, manspread or man cave; as indicated, these will be referred to as “man-neologisms”. The term neologism is commonly used to designate new words which are relatively well diffused, in opposition to ad-hoc formations (Fischer [1998: 3]; Schmid [2016: 75]). We will, however, use the term neologism regardless of their diffusion, i.e. regardless of whether they are ad-hoc formations or conventionalised words, as this aspect is beyond the scope of the current study. Schmid [2016] proposes three perspectives to be considered in the analysis of neologisms: (i) the structural perspective, (ii) the sociopragmatic perspective, and (iii) the cognitive perspective. The structural perspective studies the internal structure of words, such as their form, meaning, and context dependency (Bauer [1983]). The sociopragmatic perspective considers neologisms in the speech community, studying their uses and familiarities in context (Wurschinger et al. [2016]). The cognitive perspective studies neologisms in the minds of speakers focusing on their entries in the mental lexicon and conceptual status (Kemmer [2003]; Lehrer [1996]). In these three perspectives, various stages of the development of new words can be studied, from their origin to their establishment. The current study adopts a structural perspective, considering the meaning of neologisms. Moreover, we consider the degree of diffusion of these neologisms via a frequency analysis based on Internet data (the iWeb corpus, see below). For reasons of feasibility, our corpus study is quantitative, looking at the frequency of the neologisms; it does not present a qualitative analysis of the context of use of these neologisms. While an analysis of such contextual information on the use of these neologisms (e.g., who uses them, gender and age of the speakers, social influence, etc.) would be relevant, the data collected via the Internet as we use here rarely provide such information on users.
2. Data and method
2.1. Collecting man-neologisms
The neologisms analysed in this study have been drawn from two crowd-sourced user- content based websites: The Open Dictionary (Merriam-Webster) and Urban Dictionary3. The words had to be collected manually for two reasons: first of all, these websites do not enable an automatic extraction of their words and meanings and secondly, each of these words had to be considered individually to make sure that, in addition to starting with the lexeme man, they referred to either a generic or man-specific meaning. For example, manicism has not been selected, since it comes from manic which has no link with the lexeme man. Given that the number of man-neologisms in The Open Dictionary was not exceedingly high, all 90 of them have been selected for further analysis. However, the sheer quantity of man-neologisms in the Urban Dictionary (estimated to be around 5,700) does not allow such an exhaustive manual extraction. As a result, we have extracted the data from this dictionary in a random fashion by selecting words
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that start with man followed by the letters a, b, c (3 subsequent letters at the onset of the alphabet) and r, s, and t (3 subsequent letters in the middle of the alphabet). For example, we have selected man adventure, man breakfast, manchild (first random set), man right, manscort (man + escort), and manterrupt (man + interrupt) (second random set), but not mandaddy or man unicorn (the second element starting with d and u respectively). This has yielded a sample of 1,313 formations, which brings the total of man-neologisms to 1,403. While not exhaustive, this sample is judged to be sufficiently large and reliable to reveal pertinent tendencies and their motivations. It should be pointed out that when it comes to neologisms, any selection is bound to be non- exhaustive, since new words are coined on a daily basis. While the meaning of man-neologisms remains the main concern of this study, their form has been observed too. On the whole, man-neologisms follow the predominant coinage patterns. The great majority of neologisms are compounds (794) composed of two constituents, such as man brain, man cave or man-flu, but blends are also quite common (561), e.g., manologue (man + monologue), manstache (man + moustache) or manteraction (man + interaction). In simple terms, blends can briefly be defined as the combination of two source words where one of the source words is usually shortened, as in manstache, or where the two source words overlap, as in manalyze (man + analyze) (Gries [2004], [2012]). The form of some man-neologisms remains unknown (or uncertain) as the second source word could not be identified, hence the impossibility to determine their types, as in mansher (designating a man hopelessly chasing a woman he likes, possibly man + chase + her).
2.2. Coding
The sample of 1,403 man-neologisms was subsequently analysed for a number of semantic features. Firstly, we coded whether the neologisms were generic or gender- specific. When the gender-specific meaning was not made explicit in the definitions or in the examples, it was considered as having a generic meaning. Secondly, a more detailed analysis was carried out on the man-specific neologisms which are the main focus of the current investigation; in total, there are 1,374 man- specific neologisms. These have been analysed for various semantic features which aim at uncovering the motivations underlying these formations. Our starting hypothesis is that man-neologisms are man-specific because they denote entities which are typically associated with women. In order to determine whether a neologism denotes a domain which is typically associated with men or women, it was necessary to identify these typically male or female domains, relying on empirically sound evidence. Schmid’s [2003] article analysing male and female discourse in the BNC provided a good starting point for doing so. His corpus-based analysis identified certain discourse topics (referred to as domains) as predominantly male or female. Such preponderances in discourse reflect the main fields of interest of men and women. While this does not mean that these domains themselves (i.e. in the ‘world out there’) can be regarded as male or female, one can assume that domains that are predominant in women’s discourse are regarded as stereotypically associated with women and their preoccupations, domains predominant in men’s discourse, with men, and other domains (not in Schmid’s article) are regarded as neutral. In this article, we will use the term domain as a handy shortcut to refer to “domains that are stereotypically
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conceptualised as, or associated with, either male or female”. Importantly, these stereotypical associations may not always hold; for example, FOOD & DRINK are preponderant in female discourse, but beer is most likely stereotyped as belonging to the male domain. This is a point we will come back to below (when discussing words such as manbeer).4 The distribution of each domain that we have distinguished is presented in Table 1.
Table 1: Distribution of domains
DOMAINS EXAMPLES FROM OUR SAMPLE
BODY AND HEALTH manatomy (man + anatomy), man beard, manorexia (man + anorexia)
CLOTHING mancessory (man + accessory), manpurse, mansuit
FEELING man blush, mantastic (man + fantastic), mantears FEMALE FOOD AND DRINK manbeer, man breakfast, manshot,
HOME man cave, manchore, manthroom (man + bathroom)
RELATIONSHIP man crush, man date, mantrimony (man + matrimony)
ABSTRACT NOTIONS man brain, manconomics (man + economics), man science
MALE ENTERTAINMENT mancanoe, man club, man surfing
WORK man boss, manny (man + nanny), mansseuse (man + masseuse)
BEHAVIOUR manbition (man + ambition), man code, manstupid
NEUTRAL INVENTION manchine (man + machine), manserpent, mansheep
SEX mancest (man + incest), mansex, mantercourse (man + intercourse)
The domain FEELING does not figure in the list of domains in Schmid’s article, but is regarded as related to RELATIONSHIP (as it mainly involves another person in the definitions). ENTERTAINMENT is not in Schmid’s paper either, but mainly involves SPORTS, a domain that is present in his paper. It is also possible that words refer to several domains, as in manriod (man + period) where the dictionary definition contains references to both the domains BODY AND HEALTH and BEHAVIOUR. Our analysis of the motivations underlying coinages of man-neologisms and their representations of gender focuses on the man-specific aspect, i.e. how these words are made to refer to ‘maleness’. Not only do man-neologisms specify this male aspect, they also designate how they do so. For example, man-flu designates a flu that is male because it is only contracted by men; thus, in this case, the male aspect corresponds to the exclusion of women. In general, man specifies the male aspect by establishing a particular relation between genders (the relation being the exclusion of women in the case of man-flu). In total, nine such relations have been identified and categorised as
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male-oriented, female-oriented or neutral relations. Six of these are male-oriented relations: • “male equivalence”: refers to neologisms denoting the male version of an entity in a relatively direct way, as in manorexia defined as “the male version of anorexia nervosa.” (UD 2018-05-18)5 • “exclusion of women”: refers to neologisms which explicitly exclude women, as in man-flu in which the definition clarifies “women do not contract man-flu.” (UD 2018-05-18) • “reinforcement of the male aspect”: refers to neologisms which highlight the male aspect, as in man beard defined as “an exemplary display of manliness.” (UD 2018-05-18) • “majority of men”: refers to neologisms designating things that apply to men more than women, as in manconomics defined as “an economics classroom […] that is mostly dominated by men.” (UD 2018-05-18) • “male explanation”: refers to neologisms designating a (mainly undesirable) behaviour explained by the fact that it is male (because they are men, they act in a specific way) as in “ manterrupt: a type of gendered bullying, akin to mansplaining, in which a man continuously interrupts a woman or women in order to dominate a conversation.” (UD 2018-05-18) When none of the characteristics are specified, man is used as a neutral reference to men (of a man), as in manscarf designating men’s hairiness. (UD 2018-05-18) Man-neologisms can also denote entities with women as the main referent, in that case relations are regarded as female-oriented relations. Here are the two relations identified in the data sample: • “female equivalence”: refers to neologisms denoting the typical male aspect of a female entity, as in manceps (man + biceps) defined as “an unfeminine condition […] which leaves arms looking overtly masculine.” (UD 2018-05-18) • When neologisms do not refer to the typical male aspect, neutral references to women are made, as in “man book: a woman’s romantic novel.” (UD 2018-05-18) The remaining type, the neutral relation, concerns man-neologisms covering to both men and women while still being man-specific, as in man stoopid (sic) designating an act of stupidity that typically only men do, but which can be performed by both men and women.
3. Semantic analysis of man-neologisms
3.1. Man-neologisms and genericity
The gender-fair language approach advocates the neutralisation of language through the use of alternative forms for male generic terms, such as chairperson instead of chairman. Man-neologisms, such as man code or manterrupt, may seem in contradiction with the idea of a more neutral language.6 One could argue that this need not be so, for two reasons. First, man-neologisms need not be in conflict with gender-fair language, since it is the generic use of man (referring to both men and women) which is considered problematic, not its gender-specific use (referring to men). In other words, the conflict with gender-fair language only arises in generic uses of man-X coinages (which given its entrenchment for the X-man pattern remains a possibility), not with exclusive references to men (or to women, for woman-based neologisms).
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We thus need to determine whether the meaning of man in these neologisms is generic or specific. Of the 1,403 neologisms in our sample, only 29 are used with the generic meaning of man as opposed to 1,374 that are man-specific (X2=1289.4, df=1, p<2.2e-16).7 Overall, the generic meaning was used to refer to invented entities like chimeras, such as mantar (man + guitar; half human, half guitar), mansheep (half human, half sheep), and manster (man + monster; half human, half monster), or from a human origin such as manstone (a man-made stone) and man scoup (sic) (using one’s hand as a spoon). Given that our data reveal that the generic use of man is in fact not the predominant one in these man-neologisms, one could conclude that they are not in opposition with gender-fair language. However, male generics are not the only forms criticised in the gender-fair language approach. Promoting neutral forms such as flight attendant rather than the gendered forms steward/stewardess creates the (strong) suggestion that any type of gender-marker is to be avoided. In this view, the gender-specific man- neologisms (the vast majority of forms attested in the two dictionaries) may still be problematic for the gender-fair language, precisely because they are gender marked. A second argument that could be levelled against the idea that the gender-specific man- neologisms are in conflict with gender-fair language is that most of the man-neologisms discussed here are not the ‘gendered words’ usually targeted by feminists, since they do not designate people but entities (e.g., manbun, mankini, etc.).8 However, this argument does not really hold. When speakers encounter a novel word such as these man- neologisms, the meanings of the parts are retrieved in an attempt to understand the meaning of the whole (Schmid [2016: 74]). For example, to understand or compute the meaning of manccessories or man purse, speakers need to retrieve (i.e. cognitively activate) the meaning of man and accessories / purse. In other words, as our study shows, even man-neologisms referring exclusively to men or things associated with men activate (stereotypical) associations that are usually built in reference to female domains. In sum, strictly speaking gender-specific man-neologisms are not at odds with gender- neutral language which invariably concerns references to people. At the same time, it cannot be denied that the strong tendency to coin such neologisms (as attested by their sheer quantity in the dictionaries) represents a move towards increased gender-specific language and suggests a need for speakers to specify that something is (stereotypically) ‘male’ (one way or another). The motivations for this need do strike at the heart of the gendered representations (stereotypes) as reflected in language, as will be detailed in the following part.
3.2. The motivation of gender-specific man-neologisms
The vast majority of man-neologisms in our sample build on a gender-specific reading of the lexeme man. Behind this prolific construction lies a need to specify what is male, but what are the underlying motivations for this need? We hypothesize that man- neologisms are man-specific because they denote entities that are predominantly associated with women. To test the hypothesis, the concepts expressed were first classified in two categories: those pertaining to female domains (6 domains) versus those pertaining to non-female domains (6 domains). Neologisms designating women as the main referent (female-oriented relations), such as man book (a woman’s romantic novel), have been deliberately excluded, to reduce potential bias toward female
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domains. In other words, we only retained neologisms where female domains were mobilised ‘in reference to men’.
Table 2: Distribution of domains (with male-oriented and neutral relations)
DOMAINS N %
FEMALE BODY AND HEALTH 434 34.1%
CLOTHING 51 4.0%
FEELING 23 1.8%
FOOD AND DRINK 32 2.5%
HOME 17 1.3%
RELATIONSHIP 145 11.4%
SUBTOTAL FEMALE domains 702 55.2%
MALE ABSTRACT NOTIONS 6 0.5%
ENTERTAINMENT 64 5.0%
WORK 14 1.1%
SUBTOTAL MALE domains 84 6.6%
NEUTRAL BEHAVIOUR 375 29.5%
INVENTION 15 1.2%
SEX 95 7.5%
SUBTOTAL NEUTRAL domains 485 38.2%
TOTAL 1,271 100%
Female domains are referred to 702 times (55.2%), non-female domains, 569 times (44.8%). This difference is statistically significant (X2= 13.917, df=1, p= 0.000191). The hypothesis predicting that man-neologisms designate concepts which are typically associated with women is thus confirmed. While a quantitative analysis confirms the general hypothesis, it remains difficult to interpret the results, as man-neologisms raise numerous questions. Even though the words significantly designate female domains, the motivations for why this should be so remain unclear. One motivation could be the reappropriation of a domain to establish equality and to erase differences at the semantic level, as in mankini (man + bikini), the male version of bikini. Conversely, marking the gender could reinforce differences, by providing a way for men to differentiate themselves from women and
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thus also possibly reinforce stereotypes, as could be argued to be the case for manfingers designating strong and reassuring fingers of ‘real’ men (as opposed to, for example, manicured and well-groomed fingers of the metrosexual man). In order to answer these questions, both the domains and the meanings of man need to be examined. Crossing the domains and the relations enabled us to identify four main motivations underlying the coinages: (i) the reappropriation of domains, (ii) the reinforcement of differences, (iii) the confirmation of stereotypes, and (iv) the undesirability of male behaviours. These are taken up in turn in the next section. Overall, the analysis shows that despite sharing a common structure, man-neologisms subsume various meanings and motivations. For example, while most man-neologisms designate entities which are indeed typically associated with women, as in mankini, they can also refer to entities that generally have been defined as part of a female domain, but which are in fact typically associated with men, as in man beer (within the overall female domain FOOD AND DRINK).
3.2.1. The reappropriation of domains
The first motivation we suggest for coining man-neologisms is the reappropriation of female domains into the male domain. Some of these man-neologisms project an exact correspondence between what is usually associated with women and which now is to be associated with men. In other words, these neologisms simply designate the male version of an entity which belongs to a typically female domain, without adding any features to make the entity (stereotypically) male. This is particularly true for neologisms referring to CLOTHING, such as mankini (a bikini for men) or manpurse (a purse for men). It is also the case of neologisms referring to RELATIONSHIPS and HOME, such as mandle (man + candle; a candle for men), manden name (man + maiden name) or manstress (man + mistress). In short, the reappropriation could be seen as an attempt to erase gender differences; however, this interpretation does not hold. First of all, some man-neologisms refer to the female domains with no intention to erase differences, as clearly shown by example (1) depicting a partial equivalence between men and women.
(1) manorexia: The male version of anorexia nervosa […]. This eating disorder is commonly seen in starlets but is now affecting men, where they take on the wasted appearance of starving children in third world countries. This is more often a drug-related issue in men than the self-esteem issue it manifests in women. (UD 2018-05-18)
Furthermore, the interpretation that reappropriation of domains serves to erase differences becomes problematic when the neologisms designate and/or focus on distinguishing physical features, such as breasts, as in man bops or manboob, but also menstruation with a relatively neutral description of a specific behaviour, as shown by example (2).
(2) manrof: stands for “man rage of fury” and represents the seasons of which men show the symptoms of pms, including bitchiness, crabbiness, crankiness, a need for chocolate, and being an overall douche for no reason. Coined by Amy Gallegos from CFHS. (UD 2018-05-18)
While the interpretation that the coinage of man-neologisms is triggered by the achievement of equality of domains remains a possibility for some neologisms, the
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depiction of partial equivalences and distinguishing features shows that it cannot be the only one. Further analysis of the data lends support to another interpretation of domain reappropriation, viz. the (simultaneous) reinforcement of differences. On top of depicting partial correspondence between men and women, the male aspect of such words can also be highlighted, which is the case of neologisms referring to FOOD AND DRINK, and BODY AND HEALTH, as in the following examples.
(3) man slushie: A margarita for a man. Preferably without any umbrellas or fancy shit like salt. (UD 2018-05-18) (4) man-sturizer (man + moisturizer): A face product marketed to manly men and metrosexuals who want to moisturize their face while still maintaining a modicum of their masculinity. (UD 2018-05-18)
As opposed to the previous examples depicting neutral references to men and/or women, such as man purse (the male version of a purse), neologisms such as man slushie or man-sturizer add another meaning to the male version of an entity: it is male and, more specifically, manly. In sum, man-neologisms can be coined for the reappropriation of female domains to erase gender differences, as some neologisms denote full correspondences between what is typically associated with women and is now to be associated with men. However, the interpretation of the elimination of differences is problematic with those neologisms which denote a partial correspondence (as in manorexia), those which highlight the male aspect (as in man-sturizer), or those which focus on distinguishing characteristics (as in manboob). Despite a possible intention of erasing differences and achieving equality of domains, a competing and more plausible interpretation is the reinforcement of differences, discussed next.
3.2.2. The reinforcement of differences
The second motivation underlying man-neologisms is the reinforcement of inter- gender differences (between men and women) as well as intra-gender differences (among men). Various strategies are used to achieve such reinforcement. The most straightforward way in which man-neologisms reinforce the differences between men and women is to shift the focus on what distinguishes them. As mentioned above, neologisms referring to BODY AND HEALTH – supposedly a component of the WOMAN frame – highlight what typically characterises and distinguishes men from women. Out of 366 references to this domain, 203 involve male sexual organs such as man butter, man region, and man stick. Another frequently mentioned characteristic is hairiness, as in mansweater, man snuggy, manscarf or man beard. Distinctions between men and women are also at issue in neologisms concerning hierarchy or superiority (with men depicted as superior or as inferior to women), but also the exclusion of women, as in the following examples:
(5) man right: A term that is used by a man in an argument to prove that his point is indeed correct. It is over ruling over any women that may be present at the time. (UD 2018-05-18) (6) manbola (man + ebola): An illness similar to manflu contracted only by men. This incapacitating illness can easily be confused with a cold or flu. When a man contracts Manbola only he knows and his loved ones should care for him accordingly. (UD 2018-05-18)
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(7) man-flu: 1. Man-Flu is more painful than childbirth. This is an irrefutable scientific fact*. *(Survey of over 100,000 men) 2. Man-Flu is not ‘just a cold’. It is a condition so severe that the germs from a single Man-Flu sneeze could wipe out entire tribes of people living in the rainforest. 3. Women do not contract Man-Flu. They suffer from what is medically recognised as a ‘Mild Girly Sniffle’ – which, if a man caught, he would still be able to run, tear the phone book in half and compete in all other kinds of manly activities. […] (UD 2018-05-18)
These first two examples aim at opposing men to women, and by reinforcing the differences, these man-neologisms also provide a definition of manhood. Example (7) introduces a related and recurrent notion present in the definitions of man-neologisms: superiority and/or excess. This characteristic seems to be an essential (i.e. prototypical) part in the definition of manhood. For example, 19 neologisms referring to FOOD AND DRINK (stereotypically associated with women) highlight the male aspect, which may seem contradictory. A closer look at the meaning of neologisms reveals that quantity and strength (for alcoholic drinks) are the main characteristics to define (superior) masculinity, sometimes in explicit opposition to women, as examples (8-11) illustrate.
(8) man bread: Bread that is baked so big that it will take a grown man a whole week to eat it, having 4 slices a day. (UD 2018-05-18) (9) man-sip: A man sized sip of a beer or drink, one can finish a beer in 4 or 5 Man-sips. For a female or light weight, it borders on chugging the drink, but for a man it is merely a sip...hence the name Man-sip. (UD 2018-05-18) (10) mantini (man + martini) (noun): a martini or alcoholic beverage that appeals to a man’s palate. “My boyfriend prefers his mantini straight up which is just too strong for my tastes.” (M.W. 2018-05-18) (11) man cooler: Fruity bottled alcoholic drinks made to look like they are for men. i.e. Mikes Hard Lemonade, Parrot Bay, Smirnoff Ice, Reds Apple Ale, etc. “Dude, put down the Man Cooler, drink beer like a man.” (UD 2018-05-18)
Most man-neologisms reinforcing differences appeal to a stereotypical image of manhood. However, another strategy used to reinforce differences is to depict women in stereotypical female actions. Women are not the main topic of man-neologisms, but they are nevertheless repeatedly referred to in the definitions. While FOOD AND DRINK are considered as part of the WOMAN frame, 32 man-neologisms pertain to this domain. However, references to women remain present, and in addition to the cases already mentioned above, man can be used to denote atypicality, as in man-slop which designates easily made food, illustrated in the following example:
(12) man-slop: Since no woman was around to make sandwiches, we decided to combine refried beans, corned beef hash, chili, two cans of sloppy joes sandwich sauce, and 10 slices of [American] cheese and pour it over bacon cheeseburgers, thus making man-slop. (UD 2018-05-18) (our emphasis)
All these examples show that man-neologisms aim at depicting men, but also serve an additional purpose, which is to contrastively depict women. Other examples are man chair, manscalator (man + escalator), man bench, and man seat which all refer to a place specifically for men. However, the male characteristic only makes sense in relation to women. Not only do these words share a reference to a place, they also simultaneously evoke typical female actions related to that place, as shown by the following examples:
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(13) man chair: A man chair is the chair that men sit in while their partner is shopping for long periods of time. They can be found in almost any clothing or shoe store. What can we, as men do while our gf's or wives are shopping, we can sit in a man chair. (UD 2018-05-18) (14) manscalator: wonderful form of a rotation of seats moving slowly along the mall… only for men to sit and enjoy watching [their] …LADIES SHOP!! (UD 2018-05-18)
Women are also often referred to concerning the domain HOME, which serves the same dual purpose: reinforcing its association with the WOMAN frame as well as strengthening differences. For instance, man-neologisms may refer to chores, an oft-cited illustration of inequalities between men and women, as shown by the following example:
(15) manchore: Chores men have to do, usually demanded of them by them Women folk. (UD 2018-05-18)
The examples above all illustrate how man-neologisms appeal to manhood in opposition to women, and often even highlight the inter-gender differences. However, man-neologisms also introduce intra-gender differences, via two dimensions. The first dimension is age (young vs. old), typically in reference to physical strength, as in the following examples:
(16) man-strength: Used to describe the [surprising] ability of older men (e.g. your father in his 40-50s) to out-lift, out-drink, and generally out-work younger and more physically fit men. (UD 2018-05-18) (17) man buff: The buff that only men have. Teenagers and grade schoolers can look buff or ripped, but they aren't man buff. Man buff is that look that only a man can gain. Man buff is accomplished with years of off and on going to the gym. To become man buff, one must have enough fat to look big enough to be man buff. One must lift high weight and low reps. Every [guy’s] dream is [to] achieve man buff-ness. (UD 2018-05-18)
The second dimension is sexual orientation, which pertains to man-neologisms referring to RELATIONSHIPS: out of 132 references to relationships, 59 involve sexual orientation. Man can be used to refer to homosexual relationships, as in:
(18) mantrimony (noun): marriage of two men. (M.W. 2018-05-18)
Others, such as manbro, manpanion (man + companion), or manbrodude refer to male friendship excluding a sexual interpretation. Such explicit references to non-sexual relationships between men serve to distinguish heterosexual from homosexual men, which can be accompanied with a specific behaviour, as in:
(19) manBuddy: A straight guy uses this preferred reference to refer to his “boyfriends”, because “boyfriend” just sounds too not-so-straight. (UD 2018-05-18) (20) man buffer: The seat that two males must leave between each other when watching a movie together in an uncrowded theater. (UD 2018-05-18)
Specifying sexual orientations can reveal that relationships are not usually associated with the MAN frame, and the homophobic character of the definitions highlights this point. Numerous man-neologisms illustrate this atypicality by suggesting the suspicious nature of a relationship, as shown by example (21).
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(21) Manationship (man + relationship): A non-gay but questionable relationship usually between close friends who are dudes. (UD 2018-05-18)
As with RELATIONSHIP, FEELING is regarded as a female domain. Man-neologisms concerning this domain do not refer to feelings but to their (apparent) absence, as shown by the following examples:
(22) manblushing: When real men start to feel over happy but are too manly to actually blush. (UD 2018-05-18) (23) manblink: Men […] try not to cry. (UD 2018-05-18)
To recapitulate, while man-neologisms significantly refer to female domains, this association is not to be interpreted as the elimination of differences; quite the contrary, they reinforce intra- and inter-gender distinctions in various ways, such as oppositions in terms of hierarchy, strength, or excess. While women are not the main referent of man-neologisms, they are still typically evoked and depicted in typical ‘female’ actions, such as cooking or shopping.
3.2.3. The confirmation of stereotypes
The neologisms discussed so far all concerned female domains. Three male domains are, however, also involved in man-neologisms, viz, ABSTRACT NOTIONS, WORK and ENTERTAINMENT. As we will show below, the reinforcement of differences can be extended to neologisms designating male-oriented relations. These neologisms fit the study of stereotypes perfectly, as they ‘double’ the male aspect: they are man-specific and they refer to male domains. Even if these neologisms differ from those reinforcing differences (which concern female domains), similar strategies are found. Like the neologisms mentioned in the previous section, they can highlight the male aspect or exclude women, as shown by the following examples.
(24) man science: - mæn saɪəns – noun – a branch of knowledge often inherent in men and absent in women that allows for the programming of VCRs, lighting of pilot lights, and ability to problem solve. (UD 2018-05-18) (25) mancation: When normal males engage in “guy” activities that involve sports, camping, gambling, chasing women and most of all drinking amongst their all and only male friends. No wives, mistresses or [girlfriends] allowed. Done in order [to] get in touch with their male-primal roots. (UD 2018-05-18) (26) man brain: the most [superior] of all brains. Compared to a “woman brain”, the man brain has the ability to find directions, solve math problems, use common sense and logic as well as not being affected by drama/bitchery/ feminism. Those with a man brain find life much easier and more complete than those with other forms of brains. (UD 2018-05-18)
The last example reveals the similarity with the previous neologisms not only because of their reference to the exclusion of women, but also in their appeal to hierarchy or superiority. However, the exclusion is not necessarily total, and man can denote a male majority, as in mancession (man + recession; a recession (typically) affecting more men than women) or highlight the stereotype, shown by example (27), of men being more likely than women to choose a particular type of study or career.
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(27) manconomics. Manconomics is [an] Economics classroom (Economics 101, macro, micro, etc) that is mostly dominated by men (maybe 1 - 2 women), therefore fitting the stereotype that women [don’t] follow that career path. The classroom is [led] by an “alpha” male, most likely with a beard and a sense of humor (can also be called Godfather) (UD 2018-05-18)
In short, neologisms pertaining to male-oriented relations and male domains confirm stereotypes using similar strategies as those used by neologisms that reinforce differences. The neologisms discussed so far have men as their main reference point, even if their definitions often contain a reference to women, sometimes quite directly. More surprisingly perhaps is that women can also be the main target of man-neologisms, as in man book (a romantic novel for women), which is the case for 162 out 1,374 man- specific neologisms. A closer look at the meaning of these ‘women-targeting’ man- neologisms (which mainly refer to female domains as well), also reveal that similar strategies are used. First, women-targeting neologisms pertaining to BODY AND HEALTH focus on distinguishing physical features that are atypical for women, as shown by example (28); note the phrasings unfeminine and overtly masculine in the definition.
(28) manceps: This is an unfeminine condition that occurs in women from lifting too many weights at the gym which leaves arms looking overtly masculine. The arms are extremely defined like a man’s accompanied with bulging veins. (UD 2018-05-18)
Inter-gender distinctions are also introduced based on sexual orientation, as in examples (29) and (30).
(29) manbashingles: [one] who hates men, and bashes them, and is a lesbian in denial. (UD 2018-05-18) (30) mansbian (man + lesbian): A lesbian in a man’s body. (UD 2018-05-18)
Within neutral domains, such as BEHAVIOUR, hierarchy and exclusion are also involved to differentiate men and women, as shown in the following examples:
(31) mantality (man + mentality): (n) a masculine perspective adopted by women usually associated with dominance or entitlement. (UD 2018-05-18) (32) manbitious (man + ambitious): When women try and do things that only a man can do – they are trying to be manbitious. (UD 2018-05-18)
Taken together, the three motivations presented above – the reappropriation of domains, the reinforcement of differences, and the confirmation of stereotypes – reveal that across and within domains man-neologisms are characterised by a considerable semantic heterogeneity and seeming contradictions: women acting like men versus men acting like women or men being attracted to women versus repulsed by women. Each domain and relation bring their own nuances and distinctions, to the extent that the only thing that appears to be common to all these man-neologisms is their form. Nevertheless, minimally, they do reveal a general and common need to define or reassert gender. Even though some neologisms aim at achieving an equality of domains, overall the specific nature of man-neologisms does not lead towards fewer differences. In addition, the strategies used to (re)assert these differences are fairly
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similar, across different domains. Despite the predominant gender-specific meaning, not all man-neologisms reinforce and/or introduce new distinctions. The man- specificity of neologisms can also be used to highlight and denunciate an undesirable male behaviour.
3.2.4. Naming undesirable male behaviours
While man-neologisms can reinforce differences and confirm stereotypes, they can also highlight them, usually with the intention to change them. Remarkably, the following example summarises all the behaviours that have been presented so far.
(33) man box: The rules for “acting like a man”; the mentality, behaviors and restrictions that many men and boys are socialized to conform to. These tenets of the “cult of masculinity” are both symptoms and enablers of Dominator Culture. They can be so pervasive as to be almost invisible; yet they lead men to disrespect, mistreat, and abuse women and each other. THE MAN BOX: Demonstrate power/control (especially over women). Aggression - Dominance - yell – intimidate. Do not cry openly or express emotions (except for anger). Do not express weakness or fear – “take it”. Don’t back down – don’t make mistakes. Do not be “like a woman”. Heterosexual. Have lots of sex with women – “conquests”. Do not be “like a gay man”. Tough/ Athletic/Competitive/Strength/Courage. Make Decisions - Never ask for help. Women viewed as property/objects (especially sexual objects). (Based largely on Tony Porter's TED talk “A Call to Men”) (UD 2018-05-18)
These behaviours are considered in relation to women, as are most man-neologisms that condemn attitudes, as shown by the following examples:
(34) manologue (noun): the long speech of a man who monopolizes a conversation: monologue by a man. “The manologue takes many forms, but is characterized by the proffering of words not asked for, of views not solicited and of arguments unsought. It is underwritten by the doubtful assumption that the audience will naturally be interested, and that this interest will not flag. —Julia Baird, The New York Times, April 20, 2016” (MW 2018-06-16) (35) mansplain (verb): to explain (something) to a woman especially in a condescending way. (MW 2018-05-18) (36) manshush: When a Man tries to “hush” a Woman for making an important point, usually when the Man knew that she is right, so one way to do is to STOP HER TALKING or SHUT HER UP or SILENCED HER. (UD 2018-05-18)
The last example is quite telling: while the meaning of hush implies a difference of authority which may in some contexts be justified (e.g. a teacher hushing too excited children); manshush clearly targets the unjustified authority relationship that men often assume towards women when they engage in conversation. Yet, not all men are concerned by these neologisms, which can introduce distinctions between men as well, such as is the case for manarchy (man + anarchy) or manarchist (man + anarchist) which designate young, heterosexual, white, privileged men. Remarkably, these undesirable male behaviours towards women find interesting extensions to other kinds power relations in neologisms such as whitesplain (white + explain) or liberalsplain (liberal + explain).
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Many of the dictionary definitions of neologisms designating an undesirable male behaviour refer to the feminist movement. Similar to the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s which encouraged women to become active in the language process by coining woman-centred words, the current feminist movement is accompanied by coinages of gendered words to make social practices visible. The naming of undesirable male behaviours echoes Spender’s words in her chapter The Politics of Naming (1980) in which she highlights that naming women’s experiences makes these experiences a less dubious reality. A nameless experience can make the experiencer believe that they are the first one to experience it, or that it is not a common experience. However, when one can name an experience or practice, all doubt on the reality of the experience is removed and it also becomes easier to condemn it. More recently, Manne [2017] voices similar observations, giving the example of himpathy, a neologism referring to the inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy in cases of misogynistic behaviour (sexual assault, intimate partner violence, homicide, etc.). As she points out in an article in The New York Times (commenting on the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh as judge at the US Supreme Court despite allegations of sexual misconduct towards women), “Once you learn to spot himpathy, it becomes difficult not to see it everywhere” (Manne [2018]). To recapitulate, the fourth motivation concerns neologisms which aim at highlighting undesirable male behaviours, such as mansplain or manspread, mostly with the intention to change such behaviours.
3.3. Interim conclusion
The semantic analysis of man-neologisms presented above aims at examining the current representation of gender in language. The results of our first investigation of man-neologisms showed that the meaning of man is significantly gender-specific, suggesting that the generic meaning is not predominant in these coinages. The second investigation revealed that man-specific neologisms are mainly associated with domains of the WOMAN frame; we have identified four motivations for the (growing) tendency to coin these neologisms. The first motivation is the reappropriation of domains which corresponds to neologisms which designate female domains such as maiden name and man bag. While they show that a possible purpose is to erase differences, a more predominant motivation is the reinforcement of differences. This second motivation reveals that, even though neologisms refer to female domains, the male specific nature of these neologisms is more inclined to reinforce intra- and inter- gender distinctions. Thus, men are depicted with reference to female domains, but are, or remain, associated with typical male characteristics, such as strength or excess and they are thus (more sharply) distinguished from women. The association of men with male characteristics is confirmed by man-neologisms which denote male domains. These neologisms revealed the third motivation, the confirmation of stereotypes. Not only do neologisms reinforce differences when associated with female domains, they are also associated with domains which are already male. Moreover, women-oriented man-neologisms (which have women as the main reference point) which could have enabled a symmetry between the reappropriation of male and female domains and genders turn out not to appeal to male domains. While these three motivations share the need to define gender, the fourth motivation is directly related to the current context of increased gender-awareness. Indeed, neologisms that name undesirable
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male behaviours increase the visibility of these behaviours and possibly facilitate their denunciation. Overall, the semantic analysis reveals that man-neologisms are undoubtedly at variance, but not in direct conflict, with approaches advocating the gender neutralisation of language. One limitation of the semantic analysis presented here is that using the Urban Dictionary as the main source of man-neologisms may have triggered an over-representation of certain types of neologisms. Our qualitative analysis of the meaning of man-neologisms does not enable us to make general claims about the representation of gender in language overall, as it does not take usage and productivity into account. The various semantic characteristics revealed by our analysis can, however, form the basis for such a study of the diffusion of man-neologisms looking at which semantic features are reliable predictors of the conventionalisation of neologisms and which gender representation is predominant in language. The following section presents the onset of such a more quantitative analysis, in the form of a small study of the diffusion of man-specific neologisms using the corpus iWeb.9 More specifically, we aim at observing which motivations favour the diffusion of neologisms.
4. Diffusion of man-neologisms
4.1. Data and method
The analysis of the diffusion of man-neologisms was carried out based on a frequency analysis using the iWeb corpus. The scope of the current study remains fairly modest, as we have only looked at frequency of occurrence to assess the degree of diffusion of man-neologisms, and not at other contextual features. The method that we have used is as follows. We checked the frequency in the iWeb corpus of each neologism from our dictionary sample. Each attestation was manually checked to ensure that it was not a mismatch. For example, the search for the neologism man blush, yielded 17 occurrences which, however, were all instances of the VP man blush (as in To make man blush there was but one) and not of the neologism in question, which did not appear in the corpus. False hits such as these were obviously disregarded. The frequency of occurrences varied from 0 to 7,408. The man-neologisms were subsequently labelled according to the four motivations presented above: (i) REAPPROPRIATION (the reappropriation of domains), (ii) DIFFERENCES (the reinforcement of differences), (iii) STEREOTYPES (the confirmation of stereotypes), (iv) NAMING (naming undesirable male behaviours), and finally (v) NEUTRAL. The last category subsumes neologisms which do not correspond to any of the other categories, which are neologisms denoting chimeras such as manango (man + mango). The distribution of man-neologisms into these five categories is presented in Table 3.
Table 3: The distribution of man-neologisms into semantic categories
CATEGORIES N %
REAPPROPRIATION 185 13%
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DIFFERENCES 933 68%
STEREOTYPES 211 15%
NAMING 34 2%
NEUTRAL 11 1%
TOTAL 1,374 100%
The occurrences were further grouped into frequency groups representing their degrees of diffusion; these are presented in Table 4, which also gives the exact number of neologisms in each group.
Table 4: Man-neologisms and categories of diffusion
CATEGORY N
0 (0 occurrence) 1,030
1 (1-10 occurrences) 233
2 (11-100 occurrences) 86
3 (>100 occurrences) 25
TOTAL 1,374
4.2. The diffusion of man-neologisms
The aim of a frequency-based diffusion analysis of man-neologisms is to uncover which motivations enable (or encourage) the diffusion of neologisms. To do so, we crossed the degree of diffusion and the motivation, presented in Table 5 and Figure 1. As the number of neologisms in each category of motivations varies considerably (cf. Table 3), the distribution of neologisms in the categories of diffusion has been normalised to relative frequencies (percentages) to be able to compare the proportion of neologisms in each category of diffusion between the various motivations.
Table 5: Distribution of the motivations of man-neologisms into degrees of diffusion
DIFFUSION 0 1 2 3 TOTAL MOTIVATION
Reappropriation 67.03% 20.54% 10.27% 2.16% 100%
Differences 77.60% 15.76% 5.47% 1.18% 100%
Stereotypes 74.41% 18.96% 4.74% 1.90% 100%
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Naming 44.12% 23.53% 17.65% 14.71% 100%
Neutral 90.91% 0.00% 0.00% 9.09% 100%
TOTAL 74.96% 16.96% 6.26% 1.82% 100%
Figure 1: Proportional distribution of the motivations of man-neologisms into degrees of diffusion
Overall, the results represented in Table 5 show that there is a higher proportion of neologisms with no occurrences (category 0) than neologisms with more frequent occurrences (category 3). More specifically, for the four motivations, the proportion of neologisms from category 0 to 3 decreases. This is not the case of the fifth category NEUTRAL, in which no neologisms appear in category 1 and 2, but they do in category 3. This is due to the neologism manbearpig which refers to a fictitious animal (a combination of a man, a bear, and a pig) in the tv- show South Park. Disregarding the category NEUTRAL (which is not very relevant here), the predominant trend illustrated by most categories (i.e. REAPPROPRIATION, DIFFERENCES, and STEREOTYPES) is a decreasing proportion of neologisms with fewer occurrences, if any at all, for the higher degrees of diffusion. The motivation of naming undesirable male behaviours differs from the other motivations. Firstly, this category has the lowest proportion of no occurrences (category 0). Furthermore, while it follows the main downward trend of having fewer neologisms as the degree increases, this decrease is less outspoken and it forms the highest proportion of man-neologisms in category 3, which is due to two particular neologisms, mansplain and manspread. The category REAPPROPRIATION follows a similar trend even though less clearly so; the results are especially due to neologisms such as man bun, mankini and man bag. Despite the modest scope of our study, these results allow us to distinguish creative from productive motivations. While there is a proliferation of gendered coinages, most of them are ad-hoc formations rather than neologisms per se. This is particularly true of man-neologisms reinforcing differences and confirming stereotypes. The number of
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coinages that correspond to these motivations is higher, but they are less diffused, as they occur less frequently. Thus, the reinforcement of differences and confirmation of stereotypes can be defined as creative motivations. On the other hand, man-neologisms aiming at the reappropriation of the female domain and more particularly, those naming undesirable behaviours are not coined as often as the other ones (fewer types), but they tend to be more diffused and to occur more frequently. Thus, these two motivations, and in particular the NAMING strategy, can be regarded as (more) productive. This should not come as a surprise: man-neologisms corresponding to these two motivations appear in a gender-awareness context where social practices and new trends related to gender are repeatedly discussed, revised and, importantly, named. The current (#MeToo) context of gender-discussion may explain the higher degree of diffusion of man-neologisms naming undesirable male behaviours, as their main purpose is precisely to name these behaviours and, by doing so, making them visible.
Conclusion and prospects
Through the study of a specific type of gendered coinages, man-neologisms, this article has looked at the various representations of gender in language. The semantic analysis of these neologisms revealed, firstly, that the great majority of them concern a gender- specific rather than a generic meaning. We have suggested four motivations underlying the creation of man-specific neologisms: (i) the reappropriation of domains which are typically associated with women, as in man purse (a purse for men); (ii) the reinforcement of differences, such as man cave (a room for men only); (iii) the confirmation of stereotypes, as in man science (a branch of knowledge available to men only); and (iv) naming undesirable male behaviours, mainly in an attempt to change them, such as mansplain. While our semantic analysis has revealed the various representations of gender in language, no reliable generalisations can yet be made on the basis of our study, as these man-neologisms have not been evaluated on their degree of diffusion. Nevertheless, looking at the type and token frequency of man- neologisms revealed that neologisms that name undesirable male behaviours have a lower number of types in our dictionary sample of coinages (and are thus perhaps less likely to be coined compared to those based on the other motivations), but as indicated by the data from the iWeb corpus, they are used more frequently (higher token frequency). Conversely, neologisms aiming at reinforcing differences and confirming stereotypes were more numerous in our dictionary sample, but are less diffused, which suggests that they remain ad-hoc formations. The corpus study reveals that the visibility of male behaviours is the predominant factor at issue in man-neologisms; these results line up with the current gender-awareness context in which social practices, and particularly undesired ones, are repeatedly discussed and revised. A natural progression of this work is to expand our study to the motivations for, and degrees of diffusion of, gender-neologisms by including other coinages such as bromance, guyliner (guy + eyeliner), girlboss or mumtrepeneur (mum + entrepreneur). As the sheer quantity of man-neologisms shows, there is a strong trend to coin such gendered neologisms. This would also include looking at (frequent) coinages of woman-specific neologisms, such as woman cave and woman cold. A contrastive analysis of the woman- and man-neologisms in terms of meanings and usage could provide valuable information. Furthermore, the diffusion analysis should be extended by observing
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additional contextual factors, since the degree of diffusion of a neologism should also include other contextual factors, such as genre and/or register, the gender and social position of the speaker, etc. Only then can a true appreciation of gendered-neologisms be attained.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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FISCHER Roswitha, 1998, Lexical Change in Present-Day English: A corpus-based study of the motivation, institutionalization, and productivity of creative neologisms, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
FOUBERT Océane, 2018, Gender Representation in English, Unpublished MA dissertation, Université de Lille, France.
GAUCHER Danielle, FRIESEN Justin & KAY Aaron, 2011, “Evidence that gendered wording in job advertisement exists and sustains gender inequality”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101 (1), 109–128.
GRIES Stefan Th., 2004, “Some characteristics of English morphological blends” in ANDRONIS Mary A., DEBENPORT Erin, PYCHA Anna & YOSHIMURA Keiko (eds.), Papers from the 38th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society: Vol. 2, The Panels, Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistics Society, 201–216.
GRIES Stefan Th., 2012, “Quantitative corpus data on blend formation: Psycho- and cognitive- linguistic perspectives”, RENNER Vincent, MANIEZ François & ARNAUD Pierre (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Lexical Blending, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 145-167.
HAAS Mary, 1944, “Men’s and women’s speech in Koasati”, Language, 20 (3), 142-149.
HELLINGER Marlis & BUΒMANN Hadumod, (eds.), 2001, Gender across languages: The linguistic representation of women and men, Vol. 1, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
HELLINGER Marlis & BUΒMANN Hadumod, (eds.), 2002, Gender across languages: The linguistic representation of women and men, Vol. 2, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
HELLINGER Marlis & BUΒMANN Hadumod, (eds.), 2003, Gender across languages: The linguistic representation of women and men, Vol. 3, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
HELLINGER Marlis & BUΒMANN Hadumod, (eds.), 2015, Gender across languages: The linguistic representation of women and men, Vol. 4, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
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KEMMER Suzanne, 2003, “Schemas and lexical blends”, in CUYCKENS Hubert, BERG Thomas, DIRVEN René & PANTHER Klaus-Uwe (eds.), Motivation in Language: Studies in Honor of Günter Radden, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 69-97.
LAKOFF Robin, 1975, Language and Women’s Place, New York/Hagerstown/San Francisco/London: Harper & Row.
LEHRER Adrienne, 1996, “Identifying and interpreting blends: An experimental approach”, Cognitive Linguistics, 7 (4), 359-390.
MANNE Kate, 2017, Down Girl. The Logic of Misogyny, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MANNE Kate, 2018, “Brett Kavanaugh and America’s ‘Himpathy’ Reckoning”, The New York Times, Sept. 26, 2018. [available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/opinion/brett-kavanaugh- hearing-himpathy.html; last accessed: Nov. 27, 2018].
TANNEN Deborah, 1990, You Just don’t Understand: Women and men in conversation, New York: William Morrow & Co.
SCHMID Hans-Jörg, 2003, “Do women and men really live in different cultures? Evidence from the BNC”, in WILSON Andrew, RAYSON Paul & MCENERY Tony (eds.), Corpus Linguistics by the Lune: A Festschrift for Geoffrey Leech, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 185-221.
SCHMID Hans-Jörg, 2016, English Morphology and Word-Formation: An introduction, Berlin: Schmidt Verlag.
SCZESNY Sabine, FORMANOWICZ Magda & MOSER Franziska, 2016, “Can gender-fair language reduce gender stereotyping and discrimination?”, Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1-11.
SPENDER Dale, 1980, Man made language, London/Boston/Sydney/Wellington: Pandora Press.
STAHLBERG Dagmar, BRAUN Friederike, IRMEN Lisa & SCZESNY Sabine, 2007, “Representation of the sexes in language”, in FIEDLER Klaus (ed.), Social communication. A volume in the series Frontiers of Social Psychology, New York: Psychology Press, 163-187.
UNESCO, 1999, Guidelines for gender-neutral language. available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0011/001149/114950mo.pdf [Accessed 19 June 2018]
VERVECKEN Dries, HANNOVER Bettina & WOLTER Ilka, 2013, “Changing (S)expectations: How gender-fair job descriptions impact children’s perceptions and interest regarding traditionally male occupations”, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 82 (3), 208–220.
WURSCHINGER Quirin, ELAHI Mohammed Fazleh, ZHEKOVA Desislava & SCHMID Hans-Jörg, 2016, “Using the web and social media as corpora for monitoring the spread of neologisms. The case of rapefugee, rapeugee, and rapugee”, Proceedings of the 10th Web as Corpus Workshop (WAC-X) and the EmpiriST Shared Task, Berlin, Germany, 35-43.
Corpora
DAVIES Mark, 2018, The 14 Billion Word iWeb Corpus. Available online at https://corpus.byu.edu/ iWeb/
The Open Dictionary, http://nws.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/
The Urban Dictionary, https://www.urbandictionary.com/
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NOTES
1. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on a previous version of this article. 2. For blends, we will systematically provide the source words between brackets. 3. The Open Dictionary (http://nws.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/) is a collection of words submitted by Merriam-Webster’s users. Accepted for this collection are attested words which do not (yet) have an entry in a dictionary. Personal coinages are not accepted. The Urban Dictionary (https://www.urbandictionary.com/), in turn, is an online dictionary that was founded in 1999. Volunteer editors can decide on the publication of definitions. It has repeatedly been criticised for the sometimes purposely-offensive character of some definitions to discredit people. This dictionary has allowed us, however, to collect a wider range of gendered neologisms. While this dictionary has been our main resource for the collection of man-neologisms, only a diffusion analysis can determine whether they are representative of the representation of gender in language. 4. One could argue that qualifying a domain as either male or female (or neutral) requires independent (i.e. non-linguistic) criteria; while this seems a straightforward enough endeavour, it raises other methodological difficulties which may be even harder to overcome. Using stereotypical associations based on predominant discourse topics thus seems a valid starting point for a linguistic analysis of gendered neologisms. 5. This code refers to the sources of the data (UD for Urban Dictionary and MW for Merriam- Webster); it is followed by the date of its last access. All the definitions mentioned in this article have been taken over from these sources as they were. 6. As one of the reviewers points out, another difference is that the uses of man as in chairman or policeman are always pronounced with a reduced vowel, which is not the case of man used in the man-neologisms studied here. While this is clearly so, this may (but need not) disappear in the plural form (policemen). In addition, it cannot be excluded that the (recurrent) homography with the lexeme man may still play a role, much more so than for an occasional reduction coinciding with semantic loss, as in cupboard. Despite the phonological difference, we suggest that also the reduced form still activates the semantics of the lexeme man; alternative forms such as police woman or chairwoman could be taken as illustration of this (even if one cannot exclude that they were created for a social purpose rather than a cognitive-semantic one). 7. Statistical analyses were done in R (www.r-project.org). 8. We thank one of the reviewers for bringing this to our attention. 9. The iWeb corpus is a corpus based on about 14 billion words in 22 million web pages from about 95,000 websites; it is available at https://corpus.byu.edu/iweb/
ABSTRACTS
This article presents a semantic and frequency-based diffusion analysis of one specific type of gendered coinages that we will refer to as “man-neologisms” such as man bun, mancation (man + vacation) or manspread. Our study (based on Foubert [2018]) reveals that man in these coinages only rarely carries a generic meaning (referring to human beings in general, as in man is mortal) but mostly have a gender-specific meaning (“of, or related to, men”). Our analysis of the meanings of these man-specific neologisms shows that they are gender specific and mainly
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concern domains which are typically associated with women. Moreover, our analysis reveals four motivations behind the coinages of man-neologisms: (i) the reappropriation of domains which are typically associated with women, as in man purse (a purse for men), (ii) the reinforcement of differences, such as man cave (a room for men only), (iii) the confirmation of stereotypes, as in man science (a branch of knowledge available to men only), (iv) and naming undesirable male behaviours, mainly in an attempt to change them, such as mansplain ( man + explain; men explaining things to women in a condescending way). The diffusion analysis observing the frequency of occurrences of man-neologisms reveals that neologisms aiming at the reappropriation of domains and particularly those naming undesirable male behaviours are less numerous in the list of coinages themselves, but more inclined to be diffused, contrary to neologisms reinforcing differences and confirming stereotypes.
Cet article présente l’analyse sémantique et la diffusion de néologismes genrés en anglais que l’on appellera « man-neologisms » tels que man bun, mancation (man + vacation) et manspread. Notre étude (basée sur Foubert [2018]) montre que l’usage de man dans ces néologismes ne se réfère que très peu à son sens générique (les êtres humains en général, comme dans Homme) mais se réfère plutôt au sens spécifique (homme). Notre analyse sémantique des néologismes avec ce sens spécifique montre qu’ils sont spécifiques par le fait qu’ils désignent majoritairement des domaines typiquement associés aux femmes. De plus, notre étude révèle quatre motivations à l’origine de ces néologismes : (i) se réapproprier des domaines typiquement associés aux femmes, tel que man purse (un sac à main pour les hommes), (ii) cultiver les différences, tel que man cave (une pièce réservée aux hommes), (iii) conforter les stéréotypes, tel que man science (des connaissances qui ne sont disponibles qu’aux hommes), et (iv) nommer des comportements masculins indésirables, en ayant pour but de les changer, tel que mansplain (man + explain, ou mecspliquer : quand un homme explique quelque chose de façon condescendante). L’analyse portant sur la diffusion étudie la fréquence des occurrences des néologismes ; les résultats montrent que les néologismes qui visent à se réapproprier des domaines et plus particulièrement ceux qui visent à nommer des comportements masculins sont numériquement peu représentés dans les formations nouvelles, mais utilisés fréquemment, à l’inverse des néologismes qui cultivent les différences et confortent les stéréotypes.
INDEX
Keywords: neologism, gender, lexical semantics, diffusion Mots-clés: néologie, genre, sémantique lexicale, diffusion
AUTHORS
OCÉANE FOUBERT UMR 8163 STL (Savoirs, Textes, Langage), CNRS et Université de Lille, France [email protected]
MAARTEN LEMMENS UMR 8163 STL (Savoirs, Textes, Langage), CNRS et Université de Lille, France [email protected]
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Where do new words like boobage, flamage, ownage come from? Tracking the history of ‑age words from 1100 to 2000 in the OED3
Chris A. Smith
Introduction
1 This study aims to trace the evolution of nominal ‑age formation in the OED3, from its origins as a product of borrowing from Latin or French from 1100, to its status as an innovative internal derivation process. The suffix ‑age continues today to coin newly- or non-lexicalized forms such as ownage, boobage, brushage, suggestive of the continued productivity of a long-standing century-old suffix. This remarkable success appears to distinguish ‑age from similar Latinate suffixes such as ‑ment and ‑ity (see Gadde [1910]) and raises the question of the reasons behind this adaptability. The suffix ‑age has motivated a monograph study from Fleishman [1977], which takes a lexicographic socio-cultural or “integrated” approach to word formation and also later a corpus study by Palmer [2009]. The question of how suffixes found in loanwords become productive remains of consequence despite existing research into the question, such as: how and when does a suffix become productive? What criteria can be used to establish this (nonexistent base word in English, versus base word, i.e. transparency or analyzability of the derivative, phonological accommodation i.e. remodelling of the loan word)? More recently, corpus studies have flourished with the increased availability of diachronic corpora, evolving methods of diachronic analysis which embrace micro and macro evidence (Nevalainen & Traugott [2012]). In terms of methodology and statistical analysis, the issues of periodization and reliability of data have been shown to be instrumental in providing consistent verifiable data and analysis (Gries & Hilpert [2008], Allan [2012]).
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2 Tracing the influence of Romance languages (Miller [1997]) and other contact languages on the English language has produced much research, both historically (in the 1900s) and today still (see Trudgill [2010] for a sociohistorical perspective, Durkin [2014] for a lexicographic overview). This continued interest shows that issues of language contact such as the process of external influences on English (Miller [2012a, 2012b]) is far from firmly understood and straightforward. This can be partly explained by shifting theoretical viewpoints on language change, and its processes, which shed new light on interpretations of historical data. The history of English has been studied from multiple perspectives: socio-cultural, bilingualism and code-switching, language contact (Nevalainen & Traugott [2012]). Recent methodologies tend to favour data- driven, corpus-based approaches, rather than anecdotal histories, although the focus of language change research tends to lie with macrostructures and word orders, centering on grammaticalization and subjectification, rather than morphology. Morphology and historical morphology (Gadde [1910], Dalton-Puffer [1994], Miller [1997], Anderson [2000], Lloyd [2005], Palmer [2009]) has also been challenged by the availability of wide- ranging data, thus paving the way for new methods and thinking influenced by language processing research, and probabilistic and statistical approaches, such as Baayen’s [2003] probabilistic morphology.
3 This data-driven lexicographic study focuses on collecting diachronic evidence regarding nominal ‑age derivatives in the OED3 to test prior results obtained by Fleishman [1977] and Palmer [2009]. The question at the heart of this paper is whether the continued trajectory of ‑age derivation evolves predictably based on historical patterns, in other words whether patterns of behavior are regular, or irregular.
4 To this purpose, this paper is organized as follows. Section 1 describes the corpus, and method for labelling and analyzing ‑age forms. It details the objective of the OED3 corpus analysis, and the factors used for assessing the morphosemantic structure of the 921 ‑age nouns generated. The data provide historical growth patterns, ratio of loans to non-loans, and comparison of N‑age versus V‑age productivity between 1150 and 2000. Mental productivity is arguably partially represented in the error forms and alterations which provide some clues regarding historical language processing. Section 2 provides a semantic classification of ‑age output based on key words relying on the analyzability of the senses provided by the OED3. The resulting semantic behaviour of ‑age forms displays considerable regularity and general absence of polysemy, coinciding with the knowledge that historical ‑age forms tend to be context-specific. This absence of semantic change is discussed, in contrast with two exceptions to this behaviour: polysemous ossified ‑age words, and outliers resulting from reanalysis. It is argued that exceptions provide anecdotal, yet crucial, insight into language processing and natural analogical change, otherwise absent in a historical corpus. Section 3 then focuses on the small output of lexicalized ‑age words in the 20 th century, and then proceeds to discuss the productivity of non-lexicalized ‑age forms and their semantic behaviour using a contemporary corpus of English, English Web 2013, which is part of the TenTen family of large text corpora.
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1. Data and method: the diachronic morpho-semantic analysis of ‑age nominal derivatives
1.1. Morphological productivity: innovation and analyzability
5 How does a loan suffix separate from the foreign non-transparent bases of loan words to become a productive suffix? In other words, how does a productive process emerge from the borrowed forms entering a language? The accepted answer (from language change, and language acquisitions studies) is frequency of usage, which brings about ability to recognize a pattern, i.e. cohesion within a paradigm (Miller [2010]) and extend or regularize that pattern to non-Latinate, or native bases. This form of innovation which relies on the analyzability of the loan words allows for reanalysis to be made. That means that the suffix ‑age emerges as a morpheme with a predictable effect on the base: it allows for extension of the model to bases of different kinds, particularly to native English, Norse and Germanic bases. For Palmer [2009, 2014], analyzability correlates directly with productivity. It is viewed as a pre-condition for productivity to occur (spontaneous new innovations).
6 However, to test this assumption, access to the mental lexicon of speakers in the past would be required, which is of course not realistic, especially as data are essentially limited to written data, and specific registers and genres1. The unavailability of spontaneous oral data is a well-documented limitation of diachronic studies (see Allan [2012]).
7 Early signs of this innovation (see Bauer [2001]) are twofold. On the one hand, the existence of hybrids (Miller [1997]) constitutes a symptom of the increasing transparency, and therefore a precursor to the emergence of the morpheme. Secondly, the existence of error-forms can be interpreted as attempts to equate form with meaning in a context and so to reanalyze for increased iconicity or correspondence between form and meaning. Miller [1997] underlines that the application of Latinate suffixes to non-Latinate roots started earlier than previously thought: he counts at least 100 hybrid derivatives before 1450 in a literary corpus. Miller argues that colloquial ME allowed for a considerable amount of hybridity, which then made its way into literary texts by means of convergence.
1.2. Generating the corpus: exclusions and difficulties
8 This paper sets out to explore how a loan formation such as ‑age nouns becomes an internal pattern of neology by tracking their evolution over time. Using the OED3 to generate a corpus of 1233 ‑age words, a manual sorting of the forms carrying the ‑age nominal suffix filters over 200 homonyms and false positives. I excluded ‑age words which are verifiably transmission errors: smellage 1846 given as an alteration of smallage 1300
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base word. From the remaining 958 ‑age nominal derivatives, this empirical corpus- based study sets out to determine the diachronic behaviour of the target forms through a morpho-semantic lexicographic study.
9 A second filtering of 958 ‑age derivatives occurred during the classification phase: 921 ‑ age output forms remain, excluding variants, errors and alterations, which will nonetheless be considered in the discussion of productivity and language change.
1.3. Classifying ‑age words in the OED3
10 The following subsection deals with the morpho-semantic labelling and classification of the filtered ‑age forms retrieved from the OED3.
1.3.1. The specificity of a data-driven lexicographic approach
11 As mentioned earlier, research into the history of loan suffixes from Latin and French is not novel (Gadde [1910] studies the history of ‑ery, ‑age and ‑ment, Fleishman [1977] focuses on the history of the suffix ‑age, Dalton-Puffer [1994] and Miller [1997] study the influence of French on ME morphology). Most recently, Durkin [2014] traces the history of loanwords. Most of the recent studies use diachronic corpus data such as the Helsinki corpus to study loans over certain key periods (Middle English, Early Modern English). While this approach has many benefits as underlined in Palmer [2009, 2014] including the availability of contextual elements, and the authenticity of usage, there are also some drawbacks, namely the lack of genre- or register-specific data.
12 The use of lexicographic material to trace word histories has also greatly improved, especially the use of the OED for tracking historical evolution. Despite the lack of available data for certain periods, Allan [2012] underlines the invaluable opportunity represented in the OED3 in terms of access to semantic, morphological, etymological data, and attestation dates (also see Smith [2016]). Allan [2012: 37] points out that the OED3 structures the senses of lexemes in order of attestation, although this cannot be taken to represent the development of senses, and that proper historical development must be reconstituted by the reader or researcher. In terms of methodology of tracking the histories of words, Allan [2012: 37] advises correlating data from derivationally related lexemes and etymologically related lexemes. Durkin [2012: 103-104] also strongly recommends paying close attention to detail and considering how individual word histories interact, reminding us “of the complex interplay of factors involved in any instance of lexical change”. Given the scale of the corpus, the methodology used here will be first a quantity-based analysis, and then will include a quality-based analysis of several individual word histories. Durkin [2014] extensively tracks the history of loanwords in English with data-driven analyses. Challenging corpus studies with lexicographic data now makes a lot of sense, as attestation dates (albeit approximative) do give some insight into macrolevel diachronic evolution.
13 The dates of attestation are those of the initial emergence of ‑age words. There are naturally limitations to the dates provided in the OED3, which are approximate and cannot be construed as definitive (see Allan [2012] on the question of attestation dates and chronology), although they provide acceptable data on a large time-frame scale. The OED3 also provides some indication of restriction of usage with terms such as rare, archaic, obsolete except historical, feudal law, which provide some contextual clues to the
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usage of the term. Unfortunately, the frequency band provided only serves as a current frequency indicator rather than a diachronic indicator, and so cannot provide patterns of usage over time3. However, the indications of register are not systematic, or systematized. For instance, how is archaic different from obsolete, or from obsolete except historical? As Durkin [2012] himself underlines in his experience and capacity as an OED lexicographer, there remain many issues of methodology in terms of labelling, selection and classification of senses, as well as selection of context.
14 A fair proportion of more recent ‑age forms from the 20th century labelled in the OED3 as loans from French is specific to certain usages and contexts (such as massage and winery). This coincides with general knowledge regarding the motivation of recent loans, such as described in Ayto’s [1999] dictionary of new words of the 20th century for instance.
1.3.2. The structure and origin of ‑age words
15 Labelling the structure of the ‑age words requires analyzing or parsing the structure of the derivative by identifying the nature of the base word, even when the structure is a loan from Latin or French. Identifying the structure of native words is far easier when the derivative is transparent, however determining the initial structure within the donor language may help provide information on language processing at the time. The data in the OED3 allowed me to provide the following classification based on morphological decomposition of the OED3 entry words. (1) LOAN: this is the term used in the OED3, although not systematically. I have used this whenever the ‑age form is directly retrievable from a donor language (usually Latin or French). For example: coinage 1380
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sense “burning”, and flobbage 1535 a rare Scottish usage for “phlegm”. (8) Obscure: this follows OED3 labelling, and tends to be used when the OED3 offers several etymological pathways, with no clear preference. Examples are village 1386, garbage 1430, soutage 1532.
16 The following analysis will attempt to measure the proportion of V‑age to N‑age over time to detect if a change in patterns occurs in favour of one or other form. The question of semantic behaviour will also be considered. Is it possible to propose a relevant semantic classification of ‑age output forms, and what of the semantic specialization often cited in relation to ‑age forms?
1.3.3. Semantic categories using key features
17 Semantic typologies of ‑age words have been provided at length (Fleishman [1977]), including in the OED3 entry for the suffix ‑age, which provides historical information of its beginnings. A key word search in the entry definitions for each ‑age word provided key features, which were then classified according to larger conceptual categories, correlating with the nature of the base word of the derivative.
18 (1) ACT OF V, ACTION OF V, PROCESS OF V. This sense can be in competition with ‑ing nouns, as found in seasoning 1400 vs obsolete seasonage 1716. Note that metonymical extension can lead to the sense PLACE OF WORK, as in standage
19 (2) COLLECTIVE N, AMOUNT OF N, QUANTITY OF, MEASURE OF (stealage 1769 “losses due to stealing”, wastage 1756 “loss by leaking, etc.”, roofage 1829 “roof-like covering, or the area covered”, wordage 1829 “words collectively”, plottage 1910 “land in the form of plots; the area or value of such land”).
20 (3) STATUS OF N, CONDITION OF N, BEHAVIOUR OF N. This usage of ‑age can be in direct competition with ‑ery and ‑hood derivatives: the OED3 often gives these as synonyms, for instance coltage / colthood, adultage / adulthood, etc. Note that some rare forms such as havage 1799 in the sense “lineage, ancestry” do not have equivalent ‑hood derivatives.
21 (4) PAYMENT, TOLL, FEE, TAX, DUTY, RIGHTS. This historical usage has no derivational alternative but appears extremely frequent historically: riverage 1701 has the sense “toll for travelling on a river”, greenage 1763 has the sense “fee for using a bowling green”.
22 The methodological choice of using a feature analysis will be discussed in the section on the distribution of senses of ‑age forms.
1.4. Results and morphological observations
23 Using the classifiers listed above (i.e. decomposition and semantic features) in addition to the dates of attestation, this subsection aims to provide a quantitative analysis of ‑ age words to detect patterns, as well as to verify pre-existing knowledge of a well- documented suffix. The overriding questions are: when does ‑age derivation become an internal process, and can preferential patterns be identified over periods of time?
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1.4.1. Diachronic patterns of growth of ‑age output
24 The data confirm the patterns provided by previous research regarding historical lexical growth in the English language. The rate of ‑age output in terms of historical periods coincides with general patterns of growth (Durkin [2014], Nevalainen & Traugott [2012]), suggesting there is nothing atypical about the growth patterns. Figure 1 shows the raw output number per century: period 1 represents 1100-1200, period 2 represents 1200-1300, period 3 represents 1300-1400, and so on until period 8 representing 1900-2000.
25 The graph shows highs and lows of raw output per century, which means that these increases and decreases must be offset by the available data for each period. Nonetheless, the significance of the highs and lows can be compared with overall knowledge surrounding word production at different times in the history of English. There is a steady increase overall, with a dip in ‑age output for period 6, which corresponds to 1700-1800. This can be accounted for by the prescriptivist movement calling for regulation and reform in late Middle English (Swift [1712] aiming to correct and improve the chaotic English language).
Figure 1: ‑age output per century 1150-2000
26 Graph 1 also shows the proportion of non-loans for each period. The number of non- loans per period increases slightly more than the total output, from 1300 onward, with the gap between the two lines increasing between 1300 and 1500, reaching a maximum around 1350. This suggests that internal formation began to outperform loans in that period. The lines then tend to run parallel, indicating a levelling of the output form. Then, a reduction in the gap between ‑age output and loan output occurs for the period 1600-1700, suggesting a renewed tendency to import loans from French or Latin. The data for the most recent period are less accurate as the total output falls considerably for the period 1900-2000, rendering any interpretation of the gap between loan output and non-loan output questionable. In addition, further observation suggests that ‑age formation does in fact continue today, contrary to the appearances based on the
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number of lexicalized ‑age words in the OED3 for 1900-2000. This matter will be discussed in section 3.
1.4.2. Ratio of loan words to non-loans: early signs of morphological productivity
27 The proportion of loans to the non-loan words overall regardless of period shows that the number of derivatives by far outweighs the total number of loans. Out of 921 ‑age nouns, the total number of loans is 331. In addition, the total number of ‑age componential forms (i.e. derivatives) is 585. The total number of what I have termed blend words is 13: these blend words can be analyzed as the combination and clipping of two retrievable base words or, occasionally, a hybrid of a base word and the ‑age suffix. Historical forms such as the obsolete verdage 1775 referring to “green herbage” [verd- (as in verdure) + ‑age suffix; introduced by Marshall], and obsolete floriage4 1782 [< Latin flōr-, flōs flower, after foliage] are analyzed as hybrid analogical forms in so far as they blend a Latinate loan with a native base word. Sense 2 of rummage referring to a loud noise 1575 is analyzed as a combination of the [French loan arrimage + Scottish rummish]. On the other hand, blends such as haylage 1960 [ hay+silage], ecotage [ecological+sabotage], backage 1887 [back+frontage], septage 1977 [septic+sewage] combine two base words. Finally, the total number of unknown or obscure words is 6. The OED3 gives soutage, village, garbage as obscure, in that no indisputable etymological path can be determined. This typology provides evidence that ‑age words display the ability to form transparent derivatives from a base word rather than merely resulting from borrowed word forms, in other words, they display morphological productivity.
Figure 2: Proportion of LOANS to ‑age derivatives overall
28 The proportion of loans to ‑age forms over the period 1150-2000 favours transparent structure. However, the period 1150-1400 has quasi 100% loan output, except for potential transparent structures such as hidage 1195
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29 This evidence coincides with findings concerning the historical evolution of English, as the production of internal derivatives is thought to be dated from 1400 (Palmer [2009], Durkin [2014]). What remains to be seen is whether the structure of the forms is stable, or if there is a change in morphosemantic pattern over time. This will be tackled in the following subsection.
1.4.3. Proportion of V‑age to N‑age over time
30 Out of the 585 ‑age forms, 295 are labelled as denominal N‑age; 189 are deverbal V‑age. In addition, no fewer than 101 are either deverbal or denominal, or a combination of both, depending on the sense. The proportion of non-N or non-V bases is very small, although not insignificant, mostly composed of lexicalized ‑age words such as Adj‑age shortage 1868, savage 1250, and Adv‑age outage 1851. Figure 3 shows the disproportionate percentage of N‑age, which represent 50% of total output.
Figure 3: Proportion of V, N or V / N / Adj‑age derivatives
31 The progression of V‑age vs N‑age forms is shown below in Figure 4; the first potential perceived derivative hidage is attested in 1195. The graph represents the accrued number of N‑age and V‑age output over time, using 50-year time slices. The progression lines are very similar, with N‑age outperforming V‑age consistently, as visible in the parallel growth trajectories. This suggests that the productivity of V‑age and N‑age remains relatively constant, with N‑age outperforming V‑age at the same rate. Although V‑age is attested earliest, N‑age has a constantly larger output than V‑age. Two peaks evidencing periods of increased growth appear roughly around the same period for both V‑age and N‑age. First around 1500 and then again 1600 for N‑age, whereas V‑age forms peak slightly earlier 1450 but do not reach the levels of output of N‑age which increases at a steadier growth. The highest period of increase for N‑age is 1650-1750, which accounts for the greater discrepancy in the following period between N‑age output and V‑age output. The graph shows no sudden or distinctive change of pattern of output, which can be interpreted as an indicator of morphological stability.
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Figure 4: Accrued progression of V‑age and N‑age output 1150-2000
32 The decision to label ‑age output as V‑age or N‑age can be a complex task, as in some cases both analyses are possible. However, there may be a predictable correlation between type of base and semantic behaviour. In the V‑age category, verbs of action are often used in a specific sense to form technical ‑age nouns. Take runnage 1742 ACT OF V which has the specific sense of “smuggling”. The noun havage 1799 is limited to the sense of ancestry: it is a synonym of lineage, ancestry. As for breakage 1775, the noun refers to the ACT / PROCESS initially, then the sense shifts in 1848 to the PRODUCT / RESULT OF V, in other words the effected object of the verb. With this sense PRODUCT / RESULT, breakage can in fact be used in different registers such as music or nautical contexts. This suggests ‑age output is dependent on the selected sense of the base word, rather than semantic change of the ‑age noun itself.
33 Let us here note that another form exists: the irregular brockage 1879 which is given by the OED3 as the clipped form or past participle broken + ‑age. Brockage 1879 refers to a specific subtype of breakage, that of damage to a coin, suggesting reference to an industrial coinage process. An additional, more general sense appears some 10 years later (i.e. concomitant for all intents and purposes) in a Scots usage to refer to anything broken. This sense dating from 1888 makes it a near-dialectal synonym of breakage 1842.
34 In the N‑age category, a similar observation can be made. For instance, riverage 1701 (obsolete sense) refers to the toll for using a river, synonym of prior rivage 1598 perceived as a Latin loan (rivagium), or 1749 a collective sense for any stretch or river where mooring is possible; here a synonym of prior French loan rivage 1330.
35 In the following section, I aim to provide evidence of the semantic behaviour ‑age forms: (1) To what extent do ‑age derivatives follow the pattern established by loan word senses? (2) To what extent do the senses follow from the sense of the base? (3) To what extent do ‑age words show potential for semantic change?
36 Let us now turn our attention to hybrid forms which are evidence of remodelling in English.
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1.4.4. Hybrids: language internal remodelling within English
37 As indicated above out of 921 ‑age nouns 331 are loans, 585 derivatives, 13 blend or hybrid forms and 6 of unknown origin (i.e. unclear or debatable) namely: village, garbage, soutage 1532 in the sense “coarse cloth”, cabbage n3, average n2, and flobbage 1535 in the sense “phegm”. I should note at this point that I have been conservative with the list of unknowns; when the OED3 offers an interpretation, the form goes into the reanalysis category. For example, lovage is classified as N‑age although the OED3 indicates a probable misinterpretation of louange. I have also not included shewage given as a reanalysis alteration of scavage from the base shew. However, distinguishing blends from derivatives can be uncertain, and there is some potential overlap. Five ‑age forms combine a Latinate base with the ‑age suffix, without proof of an existing Latin or French base, making them hybrid savant blends (for want of a better word). The following hybrids of a Latinate base and the ‑age suffix all refer to collective nouns: fructage 1650
38 A further 10 ‑age words appear to involve hybrid influences of native forms, leading to semantic transfer: rummage 1486, scavenage 1878, spoilage 1806
39 Some ‑age words of unknown origin are no less intriguing. Garbage is a common ‑age noun still in use, and yet its origins appear opaque (as is the primary sense attributed to garbage as “offal”). No unequivocal base word is retrievable either from a native base or a Latinate and French base. However, the OED3 suggests the word is adopted from Anglo-Norman, and related to French garb “sheaf”. The sense of garbage has evolved from the initial sense of “offal / entrails” (1482) to the more general sense of “refuse” (1582). This semantic extension could suggest some confusion with the noun garble (1503) indicated by the OED3 also in the sense “refuse, extraneous matter”. Of course, this semantic evolution is not incompatible with standard semantic change by extension since refuse is what is not desired, in the same way as offal represents what is not desired. Garbage in the sense first attested in 1592 is a figurative sense of non-
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material things which have no value such as “literary garbage”, and garbage attested in 1526 has the obsolete sense of gerbée, a dialect French term for horse food.
40 The following section investigates the semantic evolution of ‑age forms and the impact of such change or lack of change on the status of ‑age output and productivity. I seek to answer the questions posed in the section on historical output: (1) To what extent do the ‑age derivatives follow the pattern established by loan word senses? (2) To what extent do the senses follow from the sense of the base? (3) To what extent do ‑age words show potential for change?
2. Morpho-semantic patterns of ‑age nouns
2.1. The evolution of the semantic features of ‑age nouns
41 The semantic typology of ‑age words is provided in 1.3.3. and corresponds to well- known and well-documented studies of ‑age words, including the OED3’s own entry for the ‑age suffix which summarizes the history of the form. (1) ACT OF V, ACTION OF V, PROCESS OF V; (2) COLLECTIVE N, AMOUNT OF N, QUANTITY OF, MEASURE OF N; (3) STATUS OF N, CONDITION OF N, BEHAVIOUR OF N; (4) PAYMENT, TOLL, FEE, TAX, DUTY, RIGHTS FOR USING N.
42 The semantic distribution of vage words is difficult to pin down using key words in the OED3 definitions, although not impossible. Despite the necessary approximations associated with using the key terms listed, an overview of the distribution of senses attributed to the 998 ‑age forms is proposed here. As can be seen, they do coincide to some extent with the categories listed above.
Figure 5: Semantic feature analysis of ‑age words
43 Figure 5 shows that reducing ‑age to several categories using repeated key words is more difficult than predicted. Only around a third of ‑age words fit into these categories, while another third (346 words) do not fit into the main categories listed above. There are three plausible explanations for this; first the categories chosen are too restrictive to allow for adequate classification into large types. If this is true, regrouping the outliers (subtypes) into the larger types should solve the issue.
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Secondly, OED3 entries can be inconsistent, since there is no uniformity on a large scale lexicographic corpus that is still in the process of being updated. The third explanation is that ‑age words lack regularity, transparency, and that the remaining third of ‑age words are lexicalized and ossified so that they cannot be decomposed easily.
44 At this stage, some questions can be answered, albeit partially as further study would be required to systematize. (1) Is there semantic regularity of ‑age output? The multiple categories suggest that semantic regularity is difficult to pin down using a feature analysis. (2) Is there a correlation between denominal and deverbal structures and a semantic category? Yes, to a certain extent, as long as the base word is not multicategorial, in which case dual interpretation remains plausible. (3) Is there a change in semantic behaviour over time of persisting ‑age forms? Yes, the disappearance in the 20th century of the PAYMENT / TAX / TOLL sense is the one major distinction. This disappearance may be a remotivation or reanalysis based on socio- cultural factors. The last ‑age word classified as having a PAYMENT sense is millage 1891 “The rate of taxation in mills per dollar to which a given area, group, etc., is liable” in US usage.
45 What other factors may account for semantic change or semantic permanence? In order to investigate further, the next subsection focuses on patterns of semantic change in ‑age words.
2.2. Semantic change in ‑age words
2.2.1. Lexical stability and specialization of ‑age words
46 There is little diachronic semantic change observable across the 921 ‑age forms in the corpus. Most words appear remarkably constant with one or two senses and they exhibit little polysemy. This may however be a sign of lexicalization as argued in Lipka [2002], also see Lipka et al. [2004]. The absence of multiple lexicalized meanings does not necessarily equate with monosemy. It does suggest that usage tends to be restricted to a context (which has been established elsewhere) and does not favour normal semantic change (Koch [2012]) such as metonymy and metaphor. Only a handful of ‑age forms display subsenses: rattage is first attested 1807 and then 1878 (see below); rummage is first attested 1486 in a now obsolete sense, and then 1575 in the sense “loud commotion” in Scottish usage, and again 1598 in the sense “rubbish, junk”; garbage is first attested in 1430 and later 1582; ownage is attested in 1576 in a rare usage in the sense “ownership”, reappearing again in 1998 in the sense “act of defeating”; damage, first attested 1300, has the most subsenses including the PAYMENT sense attested in 1430 as a legal term (in the plural) and then in 1755 as a slang term in the sense “cost / expense”; lastly courage 1300 also has multiple subsenses. For most of these, the semantic change that is observable seems to stem entirely from the context of usage.
47 Take the term rattage, which is given two distinct senses, both directly linked to a difference in base word rather than natural change. Rattage is first attested in 1807 as a deverbal V‑age “nonce-word” in the sense “percentage of people who rat”; the following sense rattage attested 1878 is analyzed as N‑age in the sense “loss, damage caused by rats” in US usage.
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48 Amongst the ‑age nouns with more than one sense, a small proportion have become long-standing conventionalized ‑age words (although most are labelled as obscure origin words by the OED3), which are discussed in the following section (courage, damage, baggage).
2.2.2. Tracking some conventionalized ‑age words
49 In this section I consider the semantic ossification of some centuries-old ‑age forms still in use today. These appear to be the very antithesis of neologisms. The words remain frequent today and are used in standard discourse, compared to other ‑age forms which tend to be limited to historical practices (feudal law) and technical usage (nautical, industrial, and more recently specific terminology related to massage or wine).
50 It can be argued that such early ‑age forms have become conventionalized. Some early forms such as courage 1300, village 1386, damage 1300, garbage 1430 are hardly perceivable as ‑age derivatives at all6. Note that garbage and village are given as being of obscure origin in the OED3, so their non-analyzability stems from their very emergence in English. Given their longstanding existence and continued usage, tracking their semantic history could give some insight into historical practices and usage.
51 Take the noun village attested in 1386. Despite multiple senses identified in the OED3, all appear stable, with no unpredictable changes of meaning; the definition ranges from historical, to adapt to more modern habitations (Greenwich village, New York), and then extends metonymically to the population. Notably one of the subsenses listed is a derogatory Cambridge University slang term 1864 for “a disreputable suburb of Barnwell”.
52 Courage 1300, from Anglo-Norman from French
53 Damage 1300, a loan from Old French damage (1100), shows a more straightforward trajectory of change; from the initial sense “loss” (1300), to “trouble / inconvenience” (1398), to “misfortune / regret” (1385), to the legal sense (1430) which has remained in use today. A slang use of the term corresponding to the sense “expense, loss”, in other words monetary loss, i.e. specialization of sense in terms of cost, actually dates back to 1755. This new sense could be motivated by the triggering of the PAYMENT sense often attached to ‑age words, or possibly an alteration of the pre-existing legal sense “loss, damages” attested in 1430. The triggering of this sense is therefore in line with both a context and the potential for meaning of ‑age suffix (as originating in the Latin usage of the suffix).
54 Nonetheless, the change evidenced through individual institutionalized forms appears to be dependent on sociocultural norms and changes.
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2.3. Outliers: error words, alterations as evidence of cognitive processing
55 From the 1233 generated ‑age final syllable words in the OED3, 958 were found to be carriers of the ‑age morpheme (either through borrowing or derivation). However, a second filtering based on etymological information identified spelling variants, so called alterations, deformations, or even errors. Many of these word alterations appear to stem from phonological or phonotactic reanalysis, which is significant for the study of productivity. Reanalysis may be considered a symptom of language processing, allowing for reinterpretations based on perceived iconicity. This suggests, as mentioned earlier, that errors can be perceived as clues of the mental processes of historical speakers, therefore giving some insight into the mental lexicon of past time. In so doing this signals a form of productivity, the ability to form spontaneous ‑age words based on analogy.
56 Billage is attested in 1627 as originating from the noun bilge 1522, possibly via phonological assimilation. Billage refers to “the bottom of a ship’s hull, or that part on either side of the keel which has more a horizontal than a perpendicular direction, and upon which the ship would rest if aground; also, the lowest internal part of the hull”. Graffage is given as dialect word attested in 1798 as a blend of graff N “grave” and hedge N “Graffage... a wooden frame somewhat like a Stile, placed in a bank, where there is a water-course”. Careage attested in 1704 is given as originating from caruage 1610 “ploughing” from
Eatage 1842 is labelled as a deverbal ‑age form, of northern dialect usage, from V
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grows again, an aftergrowth after mowing”. In fact, eatage appears to share its meaning with the latter sense of eddish (a stubble field), signalling a remodelling by analogy. The entry for lovage is labelled as a loan from French luvash itself stemming from classical Latin levisticum (4 th cent.; also as levisticus, libestica, libisticum, libusticum, livisticum, lovesticum, lubestica, luvesticum, from the 11th cent. in British and German sources), “probably an alteration of classical Latin ligusticum, apparently denoting the same plant” according to the OED3. The OED3 also offers the following explanation for the potential remodelling of nach into ‑age. “The Anglo-Norman forms in ‑ache, ‑asche probably show folk-etymological alteration after ache, asche, ache n2 referring to plant names. There seems no compelling reason for assuming (as is often done) that the English word itself shows folk-etymological alteration after love n1 and ache n2, although the ending of the word may show remodelling after words in ‑age suffix”. Another example in the corpus of interaction with Anglo-Norman and Old French ache referring to a variety of parsley can be found in the noun smallage attested in 1300 in the sense “Any of several kinds of celery or parsley; esp. wild celery, Apium graveolens, formerly used medicinally and to flavour food”.
57 Following Hay and Baayen [2002] and Bybee [2007] on analogical productivity, I posit that these cases of reanalysis confirm evidence of potential productivity. Historical reanalysis or remodelling via phonological and semantic assimilation can be interpreted as processing changes that occurred in the mental lexicon of speakers at the time. If this theory holds true, they offer insight into potential productivity from a diachronic perspective.
2.4. Preliminary conclusion: need to assess productivity through non-lexicalized forms
58 Identifying semantic behaviour based on dictionary senses is not a straightforward task, especially with a considerable number of forms to analyze. Limitations associated with the decision to enter or exclude the forms into the dictionary, and the assessment of meaning via accessible occurrences make it difficult to establish an indisputable semantic pattern. Once lexicalized, forms tend to become conventionalized, and in many instances, although impossible to quantify due to the inconsistency of such tags, they are limited in register (slang, technical) or variety (Scots, Manx); some are obsolete and rare (a large proportion of words in ‑age have not stood the test of time). Many ‑age words are restricted in their usage to the reference to certain practices, such as feudal systems historically, and more recently to wine, massage, technical, nautical uses. There is evidence that ‑age derivatives remain highly analyzable, therefore susceptible to reanalysis based on contextual cues. A range of potential semantic behaviour can be realized depending on the conditions of usage. This is the very definition of productive word forms, i.e. non-institutionalized ossified meaning. To summarize the conclusions of this section, here are the answers to the questions posed at the beginning: (1) To what extent do the ‑age derivatives follow the pattern established by loan word senses? Patterns appear to remain stable, there is little semantic change overall, although it is true that many of these ‑age forms are rare or obsolete, which can of course be a major factor in explaining the absence of change. (2) To what extent do the senses follow from the sense of the base? There does appear to be a predictable effect between base and derivative, i.e. a pattern that is internalized.
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(3) To what extent do ‑age words show potential for change? The evidence suggests that ‑age words which do remain in usage are adaptable to socio-cultural practices.
59 The following section considers the future predictions of productivity and semantic change in ‑age words, providing a counterpart to purely lexicalized forms and meanings.
3. Predictions of productivity and current ‑age words
3.1. Productivity measures
60 Before describing the predictions of productivity, let us consider a brief overview of the main principles of productivity and the means of assessing it. Bauer [2001] defines productivity as a type of innovation different from creativity in terms of its predictability. However, as underlined by Bauer and others, how productivity is defined can vary significantly, leading to some confusion in approaches. There are different types of productivity, although in this case it is morphological productivity that is intended, i.e. in the case of derivation the ability of a bound morpheme to be added to a base to create a derivative, following a pattern of constraints. However, the complexity surrounding morphological productivity goes beyond the ability to form new words based on a pattern:
61 (1) PRINCIPLE 1: Productivity is scalar, not absolute (Bauer [2001], Baayen [2009]). It is now established that there is no binary system of productive versus non-productive. For instance, there is no such thing as zero productivity, unless it refers to the impossibility of forming a word. Overall, productivity is best measured on a scale of high to low productivity. (2) PRINCIPLE 2: Following principle 1, it is possible to measure the degree of productivity quantitatively. (3) PRINCIPLE 3: There are several types of productivity: 1) realized productivity, (i.e. the number of word forms existing and following a pattern), 2) expanding productivity (the number of new words being formed, and 3) potential productivity, i.e. the prediction of creation of new forms – also referred to as category-conditioned productivity measured by calculating the proportion of hapaxes to the total number of tokens containing the affix (Baayen [2009]). This means that productivity can be measured with respect to three different factors. Baayen [1992, 1994] proposes a now well-established quantitative measure of productivity based on frequency ratios of type-token. This method has been perfected by Hay and Baayen [2002, 2003: 14] who argue that the ratio of the frequency of the base compared with the frequency of the derivative is a better indicator of morphological productivity. (4) PRINCIPLE 4: on a qualitative level, decomposability, or parsing, is directly correlated to rates of productivity, from a cognitive language processing viewpoint (Hay and Baayen [2002]). (5) PRINCIPLE 5: Productivity is fundamentally motivated in terms of frequency of repetition and pattern-formation via analogical reanalysis. Bybee [2007] explains that the existence of frequent words ending in the same suffix produces a pattern of semantic regularity that the speaker can analyze and apply to new forms. This suggests that productivity is essentially a factor of analogy in the mental lexicon, which
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translates to the lexicon to a smaller degree (Bybee [2007], Hay and Baayen [2002]. Also see Baayen [2014] for an overview of the benefits of a psycholinguistic experimental approach to derivation). Indeed, lexicalized forms exhibit ossification, and therefore lack analyzability or transparency, which contrasts with productivity.
62 No single factor is responsible for productivity. Instead productivity is a multifactorial equation producing probabilistic measures. The following sections consider what data are available to assess productivity from a diachronic perspective when information on users’ production and processing is unavailable (i.e. no access to the mental lexicon of historical language users).
3.2. Semantic change in ‑age words: case studies
63 The data provide few recent lexicalized ‑age words in the OED. However, this does not suggest that productivity is decreasing, given that lexicalization is a historical process. Some interesting semantic features can be observed in 20th century ‑age words such as flamage 1983 (computing slang) referring to “Vitriolic argument or ranting, esp. via email or in postings to a newsgroup; the action or practice of sending inflammatory, emotive, or abusive email messages”. This definition would now correspond to the practice of trolling. The sense of flamage does not correspond to the usual types of meaning associated with V‑age or N‑age as in this case the meaning of the base is to be taken metaphorically, from the verb flame [1377] in its 1981 sense, as in “to produce inflammatory reactions”.
64 Ownage has two distinct attestation dates: 1576 in the (now rare) sense “ownership, the fact of owning”, and 1998 in the sense “act of defeating”. The time lag between the two attestation dates is rather remarkable. Both forms can be parsed as V‑age although the sense of the verb own differs. This calls into question whether the later form has any relationship at all with the initial form, suggesting rather that these are two disconnected derivatives based on different attestations of the verb own. Rather than polysemous change deriving from the noun ownage 1576, this is the result of two distinct processes of ‑age affixation.
65 Similarly, the deverbal noun stickage produces two distinct senses which do not appear directly related but rather a product of separate deverbal affixation from two different senses of the verb stick. Stickage is attested in 1647 in the obsolete rare sense “hesitation, reluctance, delay” and can be directly correlated to the sense stick 1535 “stop in perplexity, be unable to progress, find an answer”. On the other hand, stickage attested in 1726 in the sense “tendency to jam” can be correlated with the sense of stick 1635 “to become lodged, mired, unable to move, jammed”.
66 These observations show that multiple derivatives appear to be frequent, resulting from natural semantic change in the base word rather than in the derivative. This confirms that the derivative remains stable, i.e. that the pattern remains retrievable.
3.3. Current development of ‑age formations
67 Quantifying and retrieving non-lexicalized forms depends on several factors. The main factor is the source of data, which excludes lexicographic material. A corpus of contemporary recent English will be the most helpful in identifying novel ‑age forms, including rare usage and nonce-words as they signal ability to access and produce
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(Baayen [2003, 2009], Bauer [2001]). The corpus of choice is a large internet-based corpus, which will provide a sample of natural non-literary language. This type of data is well adapted to finding neologisms (see the NeoCrawler in Kerremans et al. [2012]).
68 This signals a strong intuitive language internal productivity; for instance, some old ‑ age forms, such as snappage 1602 (N‑age based on the noun snap, a slang word for thief) are used in contemporary English with a different analysis. Snappage today, although not listed in the OED3 possibly because the entry has not been updated, is in use as evidenced by a corpus search. A search in EEBO (Early English Books Online) historical corpus for snappage generates 6 hits, from two different sources dating 1602 and 1608. In all six contexts, the sense of snapping conforms to OED3 definitions and dates.
69 Snappage occurs four times in the OEC (Oxford English Corpus) in the sense ACT OF snapping: in 3 occurrences, specifiers of the snapping are provided within close proximity, as in handlebar snappage, cassette snappage, harness snappage, and one use of metaphorical snappage in the sense of inability to deal with a situation. In English Web 2013, 53 hits are found, although some of them are false hits corresponding to the proper name SnapPage: they also show snappage used in at least three main senses: 1) instance of snapping as in a photograph; 2a) and 2b) instance of snapping (as in wire, ligaments); 3) instance of snapping as in psychological wear and tear.
(1) to my surprise Rebecca brought out her Polaroid instamatic and started to snap away. She loves Polaroid shots – the gritty, unfinished feel of them – and she assured us that she had tons of film for her retro snappage […]. (2a) I told her, and you won’t hear a peep of complaint out of me. But I am not – I repeat NOT – strapping on those slats of death and shame and ligament snappage while I’m there […]. (2b) He slept through most of the night, that I’m aware of, but got me up at four, wanting to go outside. We have been sitting here drinking my coffee, him at my feet, ever since. I did try to manipulate his leg, with a resultant furious squirmage and snappage, and he hurt himself trying to get away from me, so that wasn’t a success, in any way […]. (3) And Mrs Loomis is easy enough to explain coming from all of that followed by her son getting killed. A little snappage after all that would be understandable […].
70 The considerable difference in the results from one corpus to the next demonstrates that context and discourse type are key to accounting for usage and interpretation. This context-dependence is also indicative of a high productivity, in the sense that snappage can be used potentially in all the structures of V‑age or N‑age as long as the context enables processing. This usage is synonymous with snapping, which could be used in all the contexts, but which would have a different tone or connotation. I would argue that ‑ing nominals continue to bear a strong verbal behaviour (with the exception of highly lexicalized nouns such as drawing, painting), whereas ‑age nouns behave like fully-fledged members of the noun category. It appears that ‑age nouns behave with a higher degree of “nouniness” as Wierzbicka [1988] might say. Deverbal ‑ age nouns take on a quality that ‑ ing deverbals do not: they become particularly susceptible to quantification. In context 3) for example, the use of squirmage and snappage instead of squirming and snapping gives the reference an atemporal and agentless sense, referring merely to the resulting state rather than the event. The subject of squirming and snapping is not inherent as it is with ‑ing forms that are viewed as nominalizations of events. This creates a discrepancy between the event and its quantifiable results, possibly interpreted with comical effect. Further study would be
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required to investigate the effects of deverbal nominal derivation using ‑ing and ‑age morphemes. The pragmatics of ‑age words would be worth investigating to determine the versatility of usage depending on context (reminiscent of the semantic behavior of substantivized adjectives, which also adapt to contexts, creating a strong sense of pragmatic adaptability, see Smith [2005]).
3.4. Using web corpora to track innovations in non-formal discourse
71 As suggested by Kerresmans et al. [2012], tracking neologisms is best achieved by using a web crawler, which enables the authors to devise a tool to track neologisms, called NeoCrawler. The use of a web crawler is more suited to finding neologisms due to two main factors; first, it will be a reflection of contemporary Internet usage, and secondly, it will be large enough to reflect small changes, and new usages. This makes a web crawler a far more efficient tool than more limited corpora such as the BNC, which reflects a comparably small sample of usage from 1980s and 1990s.
72 A search in English Web 2013 for instance, which counts 19 billion words, is more likely to provide an accurate portrait of contemporary usage. To test this, a search for hourage in the BNC provides no results, whereas English Web 2013 offers six occurrences. Although six hits in a corpus of several billion words is a needle in a haystack, these uses can be perceived as innovations. Usage in (4) is explicitly questioned as being innovative via the use of an insert, and the usage of hourage in (5) is analogical and modelled explicitly on mileage. Neither of the occurrences is technical or semantically ambiguous.
(4) Okay, I felt good. Most mornings (at least in recent years) when I wake up it is not by choice, and I am a little short of the full hourage (is that a word? well if not, it’s 9 words now! ha!) that I require to function with reasonable amounts of grace and a positive outlook on life […]. (5) The problem is that treadmills don’t work so well for distance targets – you picks yer speed, and off you go. So I’ll have to build up a ton of hourage, rather than mileage […].
73 A query for the noun flamage, which is listed in the OED3 as computer slang, shows no fewer than 67 hits, which is considerably more than hourage, but the frequency remains minute compared to the overall size of the corpus. Perhaps it is not entirely unpredictable that there is a use for a term referring to online overreactions. A collocate search for the significant co-collocates show the specialization of flamage for this practice in (6); spam, bashing, chatter and profanity all apply to online behaviour. The results also show the occurrence of another sense, that of flames considered collectively. In (7b) the use of quotation marks indicates a specialized use for flames in firefighter speak, whereas in (7a) the use of flamage seems to be motivated by hyperbole. In (6) the sense is compatible with an analysis of flamage as V‑age, whereas in (7) flamage is compatible with N‑age.
(6) Although there’s powerful moderation (Forum owners can withdraw messages and even eject members), it's rarely used: because usernames are fixed and messages traceable, people are generally very responsible, and there’s no spam and very little flamage [...]. (7a) The carpenter came by and cleaned up the box for the stove and I’ve got the gas line hooked up and have flamage! I’m looking forward to cooking something hot for
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breakfast, it’s been too long without one […]. (7b) Example 1. At about 9:45PM EST a 911 call was made from “Short Stop” on highway 11 (behind Seymour Johnson Air Force Base) that the Hard Ware store adjacent to them was demonstrating “flamage” […]. (8a) Lately, I’m getting a lesson in not getting attached to things. Maybe I’m gradually becoming more clumsy in my old age, or maybe it’s just a season, but my ownage to breakage ratio is getting worse all the time. After months of research and wedding gift cards burning holes in our marital pockets, we purchased a French press […]. (8b) a tenkeyless mechanical keyboard in a simple, elegant form factor, perfect for portability and total ownage at tournaments. Stripped of its numpad, the Razer BlackWidow Tournament layout is light and highly compact making it perfect for gamers with limited desk space […].
74 Ownage finds the most hits in English Web 2013, with 244 tokens. In (8a) ownage analyzed as V‑age refers to the total amount of things owned (OBJECT OF V) but in most cases ownage refers to a metaphorical sense of the verb own, i.e. to win (ACT OF V) (8b) refers specifically to the practice of competitive video game battles.
3.5. Competition with ‑ing nominal forms: specificity of ‑age derivatives
75 Competition between V‑ing and V‑age is mentioned explicitly in OED3 entries for several word forms, such as streetage / streeting used as a synonym for the layout of streets, ramblage 1883 as a more specific type of rambling (particular to Manx law), sinkage 1883 and sinking. Some alternations of V‑ing and V‑ age exhibit potentially humorous differences in processing. Take for instance the noun screwage attested in 1865 and labelled as rare in the OED3 and compare with screwing. The OED3 gives screwage in the sense “act of applying political pressure” as N‑age rather than V‑age ACT OF V. The noun screw 1404 is attested before the verb, but both predate the derivative screwage 1865. This means that there is opportunity for semantic transfer to screwage, especially since the verb screw is particularly rich in metaphorical extensions of meaning, each based on a particular feature, manner or aim of the act of using a screw. The sense “compress, exert pressure” of the verb screw is attested 1617, well before the derivative screwage, suggesting that this analysis is not impossible.
76 A search in English Web 2013 for the noun screwage provides 60 results, providing evidence that the word is by no means obsolete in contemporary English. However, the sense of screwage is variable, and some occurrences show screwage is used as the name of a game7 as in (9a). This usage seems to rely on the sense of be screwed meaning “to lose badly”. In some occurrences (9b), screwage8 refers to the fee paid at a restaurant for bringing a bottle of wine and having to use a cork screw to open the bottle. This usage is highly metonymical in that the reference to screw is closely indexed to the situation or the FRAME.
(9a) So we can have games that involve direct conflict but are not wargames per se. Sometimes that direct conflict involves violence (as in the MMO), sometimes not (as in the economic or business game). Sometimes these are what I call “screwage games”. These games for from three to many players are usually directly competitive but do not require a lot of reasoning for success, games that involve a strong dose of chance as well as skill […]. (9b) Typically, we will order a bottle of white or bubbly to start an evening, and ask
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the somm/waitperson to cork our bottle. Often, the screwage fee is waived if we buy the first bottle […].
77 In comparison with screwage, the noun screwing appears to be more straightforward as referring to an ACT OF V based on some of the commonly used senses of the verb: messing up and having sex with.
78 The parallelism or potential synonymy between V‑ing and V‑age can be quite explicit as in the use of both flamage and flaming in (7c). One of the main differences in usage is the measurability of the notion described by flamage in contrast with flaming which is limited to the description of an event.
(7c) Flaming is universal, but different systems handle it in different ways. Both the technology and cultural norms matter. On Usenet, for instance, most news reader applications support a feature known as a “killfile,” which allows an individual to screen out postings by a particular user or on a particular subject. It is also sometimes referred to as “the bozo filter.” This spares the user who is sufficiently sophisticated from further flamage […].
79 From the above contrasts (screwage / screwing, flamage / flaming), it appears that V‑age forms and N‑age forms contain a strong concrete semantic potential of adaptability to context. They appear to be heavily context-dependent, or context-limited. ‑age deverbal and denominal derivation is particularly intriguing as the base can often be multicategorial, like flame, leading to dual and contextual interpretation and analysis of the ‑age noun. The deverbal derivative in particular has strong event nominalization features, by reference to the event or via metonymical contiguity to its participants, including effected objects, i.e. “that is which is Ved / The quantity of Ved”. This distinguishes ‑age nouns from - ing forms which appear to remain more notional (compare flaming ACTION OF V versus flamage RESULTS OR PHYSICAL, TANGIBLE EFFECTS OF V). It can be argued there is a far higher degree of embodied meaning in ‑ age derivatives than in ‑ing nominals. Of course, further systematic comparative study would be required to test this theory, as indicated above in the analysis of snappage and snapping. Rather than becoming lexicalized and ossified, ‑age derivatives tend to remain grounded in usage and practices, making them more pliable to semantic adaptation based on the context of usage, and specifically register.
80 Take the noun rakeage (1851) given as obsolete rare with the sense “that which is raked together”, i.e the object of raking, or the total amount of leaves raked. The context given by the OED3 is the following single occurrence taken from H. Mayhew, London Labour II, where both scrapeage and rakeage occur in a coordinated structure as objects of the verb remove.
(10) engaged in removing the scrapeage and rakeage… from the surface of the streets.
81 A search in English Web 2013 for rakeage returns one false hit, however scrapeage returns two hits, of which one context is fully comprehensible. In (10b), the term refers to poor guitar playing, producing a scraping sound. The verb rake is far less widespread than the verb scrape, which can explain the discrepancy in usage of V‑age derivatives.
(10b) That’s good for just having started playing. I was expecting all manner of scrapeage, but I was pleasantly surprised […].
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82 Scrapage, without the letter
(10c) I love letratone! Look at this unremarkable drawing and how a bit of letratone with clever scrapage really makes it into a nice, proper illustration […].
83 These two examples show that some ‑age words labelled as obsolete in the OED3 may not actually be obsolete at all. Even though the frequency of usage is rare, the occurrence of scrapeage is by no means unclear or difficult to comprehend in either occurrence given the context. In fact, it is arguably quite the opposite, the sense is easily retrievable and accessible, leading to contextual interpretation. This is arguably one of the most convincing signs there is of the productivity of ‑age forms that allows for mental processing and adaptable usage of ‑age nouns (following Principle 5).
Summary and concluding comments
84 This data-focused study analyzed morphosemantic patterns of 921 ‑age nouns in the OED3 over a period ranging from 1150 to 2000. The objective was to establish a better understanding of the productivity of a loan suffix which has stood the test of time from medieval Latin to current contemporary English, and which has been studied previously essentially from a corpus perspective as in Palmer [2009]. The continuing productivity of ‑age formation begs the question; how does a loan suffix become an internal suffix, by what language processes (are they different to standard processes of change?), and how does the suffix behave over a large scale diachronic timeline? The questions of morphological stability or change, the question of semantic restriction, of the possibility of normal lexical change or the absence of polysemy have been the guiding objectives of this study.
85 I set out to answer these questions using the data collected from the OED3: (1) Do novel ‑age forms correspond to a continued pattern or do they exhibit new behaviour? (2) Does the suffix ‑age hold a special place amongst borrowed Latinate or French suffixes?
86 The methodology selected provided some answers which coincide with generally established studies of loans and derivatives, as well as diachronic periods of the English language. Loan output outperforms derivatives only until 1500, from this period onwards, V‑age and N‑age derivatives account for proportionally more new ‑age words than others (blends and loans). N‑age takes precedence over V‑age consistently over the period from 1500-2000. Over the course of one thousand years, there is considerable stability, shown through steady growth of ‑age output. Two periods of more intense growth coincide with already established periods of increased neologism: 1450-1600 and 1750-1800.
87 On a semantic level, the senses attributed to ‑age output remain stable, which sets them apart from forms which are more liable to general language change such as metonymy and metaphor. Rather than undergoing semantic change, ‑age forms tend to be very dependent on the senses of the base word, which in turn account for new sense of ‑age
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output. It can therefore be argued that new senses do not derive from senses of existing ‑age nouns but instead derive from semantic changes pertaining to the base. This in turn is evidence of the continued stability and transparency of ‑age output. The continued transparency itself is a symptom of continued productivity; the ability to analyze and model is the basis for the creation of new forms. The semantic specificity of ‑age words does not make them good candidates for semantic change, however multiple derivatives based on different senses of the base appear common, thereby suggesting that ‑age forms tend to remain transparent rather than becoming conventionalized, ossified or institutionalized.
88 Current neologisms generated from a corpus of contemporary Internet English confirm that despite the high frequency of a small number of conventionalized ‑age words, the usage of rarer types continues, restricted to certain usages, registers and contexts. Affixation with ‑age appears to have a strong internalized capacity for production based on the practices and uses specific to certain populations at certain times (for instance hourage and minutage are used for specific circumstances where the measure of time in hours or minutes is relevant to a practice or process). This can be interpreted as high compatibility with an embodied perspective, much like the use of adjectives as nouns such as whites, greens (which can refer to a range of objects, such as respectively people, clothes, laundry, outfits, parts of an egg, and dollars, vegetables, army or nurse uniforms, etc.). It seems neologisms may be more finely indexed to usage and practices than conventional labels, and novel ‑age words seem to correlate with this behaviour, making them more adaptable. Contrary to ‑ity and ‑ment, the form seems to have increased hybridity / adaptation, making it less recognizable as a foreign or French import. Phonological change may have played a crucial role in the adaptation and success of ‑age derivation in English.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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BAAYEN Harald, 2014, “Experimental and psycholinguistic approaches to studying derivation”, in LIEBER Rochelle & STEKAUER Pavol. (eds.), Handbook of Derivational Morphology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 95-117.
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Koch Peter, 2012, “The Pervasiveness of Contiguity and Metonymy in Language Change”, in Allan Kathryn & Robinson Justyna A. (eds.), Current Methods in Historical Semantics, Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 259-312.
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MILLER Gary D., 2010, Language Change and Linguistic Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Dictionary and corpus references
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JAKUBÍČEK Miloš, KILGARRIFF Adam, KOVÁŘ Vojtech., RYCHLÝ Pavel & SUCHOMEL Vít, 2013, “The TenTen corpus family”, 7th International Corpus Linguistics Conference CL, ©Lexical Computing Limited, 125-127.
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KROCH Anthony & TAYLOR Ann, 2000, The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (PPCME2), Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. CD-ROM, second edition, release 4 (http:// www.ling.upenn.edu/ppche-release-2016/PPCME2-RELEASE-4).
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NOTES
1. The genres that compose diachronic data (such as the EEBO and The Penn Parse Historical Corpora) are mostly semi-oral discourse in the form of plays, and correspondence, as well as historical records and to a lesser extent fiction. 2. This -age / hedge remodelling notably brought further reinterpretation of the loan word curtilage 1292 orignally from Anglo-Norman curtilage, but later reanalysed by speakers in the 17th century as court-ledge or court-lodge. 3. This is a matter for future research, using a historical corpus such as the Penn Historical Corpus. Tracking the usage of some -age words over time in a large-scale historical corpus would provide invaluable information of frequency of usage, including the usage of rare -age forms. 4. The OED3 actually uses the term badly to assess the non-standard structure. 5. There is anecdotal evidence in the data that the assimilation of -age to /ɪʤ/ can lead to a resemblance, and occasionally a confusion with other words of similar meaning and carrying a phonetically similar ending, such as -ish. This type of remodelling is well-known and could in part account for the success of the -age ending. 6. Many thanks to one of the reviewers who suggested that the question of -age forms could be tested by analysing the etymology of the combined root morpheme. Etymological pathways could explain semantic developments. 7. Possibly formed via analogy with the preexisting noun cribbage 1641, referring to a game of cards. 8. Compare with the preexisting corkage 1838 referring to the charge applied by waiters or staff to uncork a bottle not supplied by themselves.
ABSTRACTS
This diachronic lexicographic study aims to analyze the morpho-semantic behaviour of ‑age forms in the OED3. The objective is to provide evidence of the diachronic processes which enabled a loan form to become an independent productive pattern of derivation in English. Using the OED3 as a corpus, a list of all the words ending in ‑age were generated and then filtered to exclude all those that did not undoubtedly carry the ‑age ending. This filtering removed many false results, such as compounds carrying the noun age and the combining form ‑phage, as well as a multitude of derivatives of existing ‑age nouns, leaving a total of 921 definitive ‑age nominal derivatives. A classification of these forms from a morpho-semantic perspective was then carried out with a view to determining the patterns of formation. The classification is based on historical attestation date, on word origin or base word analysis (LOAN, LOAN BLEND, DEVERBAL OR DENOMINAL DERIVATIVE, BLEND, or UNKNOWN) and finally on semantic features (ACTION / RESULT, PAYMENT, QUANTITY, COLLECTIVE). The distribution of these factors over time then allowed me to attempt to answer the following questions. When do language internal derivatives begin? Are the ‑age forms stable over time or do they evolve, and if so in which direction? The findings of this initial morpho-semantic analysis showed that the pattern of ‑age derivation has remained remarkably stable since its beginnings around 1200 until today, with a slight preference for denominal ‑age nouns over deverbal ‑age nouns. While these results tend to
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confirm pre-existing findings in historical lexical morphology, the following step involved assessing the productivity of ‑age words over time. The novel part of this study was twofold; first focusing on whether ‑age forms are susceptible to semantic change, and secondly focusing on error forms and transmission errors which enabled me to consider the evidence of historical productivity. In the final section these productivity concerns were extended to contemporary English via a Web Crawler corpus so as to investigate whether ‑age forms continue to exhibit similar behaviour or whether new patterns can be determined. Three major findings stand out. 1) So-called obsolete vage forms in the OED3 are not obsolete after all, showing the remarkable productivity and adaptability of ‑age forms over the centuries; 2) ‑age words follow a reliable semantic pattern, fitting into four main categories of ACTION / RESULT, TAX / RIGHTS / PAYMENT, STATUS / POSITION, COLLECTIVE / QUANTITY. There is a predictable relation between base word and derivative, which may explain the continued success of ‑age forms, in that they can be used in slang, technical usage, etc. Their remarkable adaptability allows for a sense to be directly dependent on a context, as exemplified by the usage of ownage, or rakeage in English Web 2013; 3) ‑age forms are not very polysemous, they remain transparent in their relation to the base word. They also appear to be less likely to be lexicalized given this transparency. This low rate of lexicalization is a sign of high productivity and may also explain the high rates of obsolescence of historical ‑age words in the OED3.
Cette étude diachronique lexicographique vise à étudier le comportement morphosémantique des mots en ‑age du lexique de l’anglais. L’objectif est de mieux comprendre les mécanismes historiques qui ont permis le passage d’une forme empruntée au latin et au français pour devenir un mécanisme de dérivation productif de l’anglais. À partir du dictionnaire OED en ligne, l’ensemble des mots se terminant en ‑age ont été relevés, pour ensuite trier et supprimer ceux qui ne sont pas porteurs du morphème lié ‑age (tels que toutes les lexies contenant le morphème libre nominal ‑age) ainsi que toutes les formes qui sont dérivées de formes en ‑age. Ces exclusions permettent de réduire le nombre de lexies à l’étude de plus de 1200 à un peu plus de 900 lexies. Plusieurs étapes motivent le travail de classement et d’observation des lexies : un classement diachronique par année d’attestation, un classement morphologique selon la forme de la lexie (emprunt, forme hybride modelée sur le français ou le latin, dérivé, ou encore amalgame), un classement sémantique des formes selon des grands types sémantiques récurrents : ACTION, RESULTAT, COLLECTIF, QUANTITÉ, STATUT. À partir de ces données, une analyse diachronique de la répartition des lexies en ‑age à travers le temps devient possible. Les questions posées sont les suivantes : les lexies en ‑age ont-elles suivi une courbe stable au fil du temps, ou bien y a-t-il des périodes de changement ? La répartition des lexies déverbales et dénominales est-elle stable ? À quel moment la dérivation a-t-elle pris le dessus sur l’emprunt ? Quelle est la productivité actuelle des lexies en ‑age et que nous apprennent les nombreuses formes obsolètes du corpus ? Cette étude permet de montrer la remarquable stabilité de production des lexies en ‑age au fil du temps, avec une prépondérance de lexies dénominales sur les lexies déverbales. Les courbes de croissance des lexies déverbales et nominales s’avèrent relativement stables et parallèles, sans grand bouleversement des tendances. Plusieurs périodes fastes de création de lexies en ‑age sont confirmées par les données. Alors que ces résultats tendent à confirmer les études existantes sur la question des emprunts et des dérivés, la dernière partie de ce travail sur la productivité actuelle des lexies en ‑age de l’anglais, ainsi que la confrontation entre dérivés en ‑ing et dérivés en ‑age permet d’observer des caractéristiques fondamentales. 1) Les lexies obsolètes en ‑age du dictionnaire ne le sont pas ou plus véritablement, ce qui montre la capacité d’adaptation remarquable de ces formes (ce qui les différencie des dérivés en ‑ity et ‑ment en particulier ;
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2) Les lexies en ‑age ont un comportement sémantique cohérent qui correspond aux quatre types sémantiques définis (ACTION / RESULT, TAXE / DROIT / PAIEMENT, STATUT / DROIT, COLLECTIF / QUANTITÉ). Le sens du dérivé reste prévisible à partir du sens de la base, ce qui explique en partie leur remarquable succès, en particulier dans des registres variés allant de l’argot aux registres techniques. On note aussi une adaptation exceptionnelle, rendant le sens motivé par son contexte socioculturel (comme le montrent les emplois des lexies ownage, ou encore rakeage dans le corpus contemporain English Web 2013) ; 3) Les dérivés en ‑age ne sont pas polysémiques : c’est le sens de la base qui explique le sens du dérivé. Ils restent peu lexicalisés, preuve de leur productivité continue.
INDEX
Keywords: neology, productivity, loan words, diachronic lexicography, OED3, corpus analysis, lexical cognitive semantics, Sketch Engine Mots-clés: néologie, productivité, emprunts, OED3, analyse de corpus, diachronie, lexicographie, sémantique lexicale cognitive, Sketch Engine
AUTHOR
CHRIS A. SMITH Université de Caen [email protected]
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List of references
Denis Jamet and Adeline Terry
1 The following list of references includes works that are often cited in the neological studies of English and French. Most references are therefore either in English or in French. This bibliography is by no means an exhaustive list, and cannot be: when you work in lexicology, you are bound to mention neology – be it lexical or semantic neology. The following works or articles are merely suggested readings and other relevant studies may be added.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BAUER Laurie, 1993, English Word-formation, “Cambridge textbooks in Linguistics”, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
BAUER Laurie, HUDDLESTON Rodney & PULLUM Geoffrey, 2002, “Lexical word-formation”, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Chapter 19, 1621-1722.
BURRIDGE Kate & BERGS Alexander, 2016, Understanding language change, London/New York: Routledge.
BRINTON Laurel J. & TRAUGOTT Elizabeth C., 2006 (2005), Lexicalization and Language Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
BYBEE Joan, 1985, Morphology, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
DINCA Daniela, 2011, « La néologie et ses mécanismes de création lexicale », Typologie des emprunts lexicaux français en roumain. Fondements théoriques, dynamique et catégorisation sémantique, Craiova : Editura Universitaria.
DURKIN Philip, 2006, “Lexical Borrowing in Present-Day English: A Preliminary investigation based on the Oxford English Dictionary”, in KÖLLIGAN Daniel & SEN Ranjan (eds.), Oxford University working
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papers in linguistics, philology, & phonetics n° 11, 26‑42: http://www.ling-phil.ox.ac.uk/files/owp2006.pdf
DURKIN Philip, 2014, Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
DURKIN Philip, 2014, “Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English”, International Journal of Lexicography n° 27(4), 457‑466.
ELUERD Roland, 2000, La lexicologie, ‘Que-sais-je n°3548’, Paris : Presses Universitaires de France.
FISCHER Roswitha, 1998, Lexical Change in Present-Day English: A corpus-based study of the motivation, institutionalization, and productivity of creative neologisms, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
GAUDIN François & GUESPIN Louis, 2000, Initiation à la lexicologie française. De la néologie aux dictionnaires, ‘Champs linguistiques’, Duculot - De Boeck.
GÉVAUDAN Paul & KOCH Peter, 2010, « Sémantique cognitive et changement lexical », Grandes voies et chemins de traverse de la sémantique cognitive, Mémoire de la société de linguistique de Paris, nouvelle série, tome XVII, Peeters, 103‑145.
GUILBERT Louis, 1973, « Théorie du néologisme », Cahiers de l’association internationale des études françaises, n° 25, 9‑29.
GUILBERT Louis (ed.), 1974, Langages, Vol. 36: “La néologie lexicale”.
HALLIDAY M.A.K., 2004, Lexicology and Corpus Linguistics: an Introduction, London – New York: Continuum.
HALLIDAY M.A.K., 2007, Lexicology: a Short Introduction, London – New York: Continuum.
HARLEY Heidi, 2017 (2006), English Words: A Linguistic Introduction, ‘The Language Library’, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
HORMIGO M.T.D. & VARO C.V, 2011, “Neology and Cognition”, Linguistic Insights, Vol. 158, 15-34.
HUMBLEY John, 2018, La néologie terminologique, Limoges: Lambert-Lucas.
KASTOVSKY Dieter, 1986, “The problem of productivity in word-formation”, Linguistics 24, 585-600.
JAMET Denis (ed.), 2018, ELAD-SILDA, HS#1: ‘NEOLEX’: https://revues.univ-lyon3.fr/elad-silda/ index.php?id=228
KATAMBA Francis, 1994, English Words, London: Routledge.
KELLER Rudi, 1994, On language change: The invisible hand in language, London: Routledge.
LEHMANN Alise & MARTIN-BERTHET Françoise, 1998, Introduction à la lexicologie. Sémantique et morphologie, ‘Lettres sup’, Paris : Dunod.
LIPKA Leonhard, 2002, English Lexicology: lexical structure, word semantics & word-formation, Gunter Nach Verlag.
MEJRI Salah & SABLAYROLLES Jean-François (eds.), 2011, Langages, Vol. 183: “Néologie”.
MEL’CUK Igor, CLAS André & POLGUÈRE Alain, 1995, Introduction à la lexicologie explicative et combinatoire, coll. « Champs linguistiques », Duculot, AUPELF-UREF.
MORTUEUX Marie-Françoise, 1997, La lexicologie entre langue et discours, ‘Campus, Linguistique’, Éditions SEDES.
NIKLAS-SALMINEN Aïno, 1997, La lexicologie, ‘Cursus’, Paris : Armand Colin/Masson.
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PAILLARD Michel, 2000, Lexicologie contrastive anglais-français – Formation des mots et construction du sens, Gap, Paris : Ophrys.
PLAG Ingo, 2018, Word-Formation in English, Cambridge University Press.
PHILLIPS Jean McCabe, 1982, A Sociolinguistic Perspective on English Neological Processes, PhD dissertation, Loos Angeles: University of California.
POLGUÈRE Alain, 2016 (2003), Lexicologie et sémantique lexicale. Notions fondamentales, ‘Paramètres’, Montréal : Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
PRUVOST Jean & SABLAYROLLES Jean-François, 2012 (2003), Les néologismes, Coll. ‘Que sais-je ?’, Paris : PUF.
SABLAYROLLES Jean-François, 2000, La néologie en français contemporain, Paris : Honoré Champion.
SABLAYROLLES Jean-François, 2002, « Fondements théoriques des difficultés pratiques du traitement des néologismes », Revue française de linguistique appliquée, vol. VII, n° 1, 97-111.
SABLAYROLLES Jean-François, 2006, « La néologie aujourd’hui », in GRUAZ Claude (ed.), A la recherche du mot : De la langue au discours, Lambert-Lucas, 141-157.
SABLAYROLLES Jean-François (ed.), 2012, Cahiers de lexicologie 2012-1, n° 100, ‘Néologie sémantique et analyse de corpus’, Paris : Classiques Garnier.
Les néologismes, Paris : coll. « Que sais-je ? », PUF.
SCHMID Hans-Jörg, 2016, English Morphology and Word-Formation: An introduction, Berlin: Schmidt Verlag.
SCHULZ Julia, 2012, Twentieth Century Borrowings from French to English: Their Reception and Development, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
SPENCER Andrew & ZWICKY Arnold (eds.), 1998, The Handbook of Morphology, Oxford: Blackwell.
STEKAUER Pavol & LIEBER Rochelle, 2005, Handbook of Word-Formation, Springer: Dordrecht.
STOCKWELL Robert & MINKOVA Donka, 2008 (2001), English Words: History and Structure, ‘Cambridge textbooks in Linguistics’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
TOURNIER Jean, Précis de lexicologie en anglais, Paris : Ellipses.
TOURNIER Jean, 1991, Structures lexicales de l’anglais : guide alphabétique, Paris : Nathan Université.
TOURNIER Jean, 1985, Introduction descriptive à la lexicogénétique de l’anglais contemporain, Paris, Genève : Champion, Slatkine.
WUNDERLICH Dieter, 2006, Advances in the theory of the lexicon, ‘Interface explorations, 13’, Berlin - New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Journals specialized in neology
Neologica: https://classiques-garnier.com/neologica.html
Les Cahiers de lexicologie: https://classiques-garnier.com/cahiers-de-lexicologie.html
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AUTHORS
DENIS JAMET Université de Lyon (UJML3) & University of Arizona [email protected]
ADELINE TERRY Université de Lyon (UJML3) [email protected]
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