The perception of connotations in lexical innovations

Abstract

In any living language new words are created to refer to new realities, but new words are also formed to express realities that are already known or new perspectives of these realities (Guilbert 1975, Cabré 1989). In this sense, it is considered that the new words or neologisms are created within the heart of a linguistic community in order to meet the needs of a specific community. This paper is the result of an exhaustive revision of the dichotomy denominative neology and stylistic neology, which is broadly used in neology, a field of study devoted to neologisms, which are characterized by the newness, in the sense that they are recent words, scarcely used, unknown or surprising (Freixa 2010, Llopart-Saumell 2016). Regarding these antonymous categories, we try to answer the following questions: why did this word appear? What is its aim? This traditional dichotomy considers that there are two underlying motivations to create new words. Generally speaking, neologisms considered as denominative have a referential or denotative function, since they designate new concepts or objects of reality and the form they adopt designates the referent without causing ambiguity. These words are the result of productive processes of word-formation rules. Besides, this type of neologisms is considered to have a medium, high frequency of use, and may stabilize in their use and become part of the lexical wealth of the speakers of a linguistic community. Regarding stylistic neologisms, they have opposite characteristics. On the one hand, it is indicated that this type of neologisms serve an expressive or connotative function, since they provide a new nuance of an already known referent. Since they aim at capturing the attention of recipients, they use word formation processes that are little productive, since their aim is playing with words and being original. As a result, this type of neologisms shows a low frequency and they tend to be ephemeral (Guilbert 1975, Cabré 1989, Guerrero 2005)