Open AccessWomen and Men Facing Lexical Innovation
Author(s) -
Paola González
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
colombian applied linguistics journal/colombian applied linguistics journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2248-7085
pISSN - 0123-4641
DOI - 10.14483/22487085.10627
Subject(s) - dynamism , neologism , variation (astronomy) , linguistics , focus (optics) , newspaper , sociology , psychology , sociolinguistics , media studies , epistemology , philosophy , physics , astrophysics , optics
Over the last few decades, the gender variable has been investigated in terms of linguistic variation. A number of studies (mainly phonological in nature) have been carried out. These studies have generated preliminary conclusions such as “women are more conservative and use more standard forms of language than men” or that “men are more innovative than women” (Chambers, 2009; Labov, 1994).Generally, we are aware that new words are created every day, which is indicative of the dynamism of languages and the changes taking place in a given society. The study of these new lexical entities, called neologisms, allows us to understand how language speakers can adapt to social changes.The two issues mentioned above are our main motivation to conduct this investigation, which will be based on a linguistic approach with a focus on neology. Hence, this paper focuses on Spanish neological units produced by women and men, as found in contemporary newspaper articles and blogs.