Social Network and Neologisms

Abstract

On the material of social media the paper examines different types of word formation processes that lead to the coinage and establishment of neologisms in urban as well as Standard English vocabulary. The most frequently employed types of word formation evidenced in the empirical data are: abbreviation, acronym, blending, clipping, conversion, affixation, reduplication.

The author argues that the emergence of neologisms in the social networking sites under discussion is determined by the restrictions imposed upon users: the number of symbols for updating a status or personal information is limited. As a result of the study two large groups of neologisms have been singled out: lexical items that have undergone a semantic change and newly coined units.