Lexical Creativity, Texts and Contexts

Edited by Judith Munat
University of Pisa
The coining of novel lexical items and the creative manipulation of existing words and expressions is heavily dependent on contextual factors, including the semantic, stylistic, textual and social environments in which they occur. The twelve specialists contributing to this collection aim to illuminate creativity in word formation with respect to functional discourse roles, but also examine ‘critical creativity’ determined by language policy, as well as diachronic phonetic variation in creatively-coined words.

The data, based either on large corpora or smaller hand-collected samples, is drawn from advertising, the daily press, electronic communication, literature, spoken interaction, cartoons, lexical ontologies and style guides.

The coining of novel lexical items and the creative manipulation of existing words and expressions is heavily dependent on contextual factors, including the semantic, stylistic, textual and social environments in which they occur. The twelve specialists contributing to this collection aim to illuminate creativity in word formation with respect to functional discourse roles, but also examine ‘critical creativity’ determined by language policy, as well as diachronic phonetic variation in creatively-coined words. The data, based either on large corpora or smaller hand-collected samples, is drawn from advertising, the daily press, electronic communication, literature, spoken interaction, cartoons, lexical ontologies and style guides. Each study analyses novel formations in relation to their contexts of use and inevitably leads to the crucial question of creativity vs. productivity. By focussing on creative lexical formations at the level of parole, these studies provide insights into morphological theory at the level of langue, and ultimately seek to explain lexical creativity as a function of language use.
[Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics, 58]  2007.  xvi, 294 pp.
Publishing status: Available
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027215673 | EUR 110.00 | USD 165.00
 
e-BookSold by e-book platforms
ISBN 9789027291752 | EUR 110.00 | USD 165.00
 
 

Table of Contents

List of tables
vii–viii
List of figures
ix
List of contributors
xi–xii
Editor's Preface
xiii–xvi
Introduction
1
Lexical creativity, textuality and problems of metalanguage
Leonhard Lipka
3–12
Lexical Creativity in Disourse
13
How to do (even more) things with nonce words (other than naming)
Peter Hohenhaus
15–38
The phonetics of 'un'
Jennifer Hay
39–57
Lexical creativity in texts
59
The press
59
Tracing lexical productivity and creativity in the British media: The Chavs and the Chav-Nots
Antoinette Renouf
61–89
Cartoon art
91
Cathy Wilcox meets the phrasal lexicon: Creative deformation of phrasal lexical items for humorous effect
Koenraad Kuiper
93–112
Advertising and the media
113
Blendalicious
Adrienne Lehrer
115–133
Electronic communication
135
Keeping up with the times: Lexical creativity in electronic communication
Paula López Rúa
137–159
Fictional genres
161
Lexical creativity as a marker of style in science fiction and children's literature
Judith Munat
163–185
Creative concept formation
187
Dynamic creation of analogically-motivated terms and categories in lexical ontologies
Tony Veale
189–212
Creative lexical categorization in a narrative fiction
Dolores Porto Requejo
213–236
Sociopolitical effects on creativity
237
Occasional and systematic shifts in word-formation and idiom use in Latvian as a result of translation
Andrejs Veisbergs
239–261
Critical creativity: A study of 'politically correct' terms in style guides for different types of discourse
Roswitha Fischer
263–282
Name index
283–285
Subject index
287–294

Quotes

“[The volume] presents the reader with a thought-provoking collection of generally original articles on contemporary issues in lexicology. One might find the diversity of themes and the absence of a common theoretical approach initially unsettling. It is however an inevitable consequence of a collection resulting from an international workshop of this type and might also be considered a strength, as a wealth of methodological perspectives which might otherwise have evolved in isolation are brought together in one place and in one rewarding volume.”

Graham Ranger, Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse, in Lexis: E-journal in English Lexicology

“In terms of overall interest and opening up new vistas for the study of morphology, this book gets a full five stars. [...] Groundbreaking works like this one should be encouraged and attentively read, and their spirit emulated.”
Karen S. Chung, National Taiwan University, in Linguist List 19.3675 (2008)
“A fascinating introduction to an aspect of word-formation studies that has generally been ignored, the way in which new words are used in texts and why they are coined rather than just how they are coined. This book contains a wealth of valuable data.”
Laurie Bauer, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

“Judith Munat has brought together a timely series of interesting studies on lexical creativity. The book offers a wealth of data on the lexical options available to speakers of English to amuse their readers, to attract their attention, and to create fictional or shared private worlds. A wide range of registers, ranging from children's books to science fiction and from speech corpora of interviews to large longitudinal corpora of British newspapers, all bear witness to the importance of lexical creativity for making texts both attractive and effective.”
Harald Baayen, Radboud University Nijmegen & Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
“[...] due to its impressive scope of coverage and the truly creative treatment of lexical creativity, this fine collection will appeal to specialists in several linguistic disciplines and beyond. It is highly informative and thought-provoking.”
Bogdan Szymanek, The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, in SKASE Vol. 5 (2008)

Subjects

Benjamins Subject classification

Linguistics

Terminology & Lexicography

BIC Subject

CF: Linguistics

BISAC Subject

LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2007020957
This page is part of John Benjamins Publishing Company website. Click 'embed' to view its contents in the fully-featured web application. Embed