A Metaphorical And Contextual Approach To English Neologisms

The booming English neologisms have been gaining their weight in English language since the 1990s. Many linguists pay their attention to this growing force. Hence, out come numerous dictionaries and academic papers of English new words. However most of the researches concerned focus on the morphemic structure of new words, but say little about the underlying reasons for their existence.After examining several dictionaries of neologisms on hand, the author finds the tendency of the growing neologisms: firstly, the connotation of a neologism is often diverted from its literal meaning and is motivated by mental association, namely, metaphor; and secondly the meaning of a new word can be well comprehended only within the context of its culture. According to this finding, this paper is designed to find out the reasons for the existence of neologisms from two perspectives, that is, the language internal one and the language external one. As for the former, the author applies the theory of conceptual metaphor to analyze the novelty and the variation of a language, which lead to the birth of neologisms. Based on the modern cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor is viewed as a way of thinking rather than a traditional rhetorical skill or the ornament of a language. Mapping is the working mechanism of conceptual metaphor that bridges two separate domains, and offers the way we learn the knowledge of the unknown and new concept in terms of the known and old one. In this paper, the author attempts to prove that metaphor, as a way of thinking is the source of new concepts, and thus linguistically fosters numerous neologisms. As for the latter, new words are created to reflect the physical world and are used to serve the communicative purpose. The concrete context of a particular culture for a particular language is the origin of new items, and it determines the specific meaning of a new word. English neologisms exist in the context of English culture, without which new words lose their referents and roles and hence lose the reason for their existence. Besides, the metaphorical way of creating new words fromthe cognitive perspective is grounded on our embodied experience, which in turn constitutes the context of a given culture neologisms live by. Thus, the world context, or a special context of a given culture is the final trigger of the emergence of neologisms.The language internal factor and the language external one are inseparable, and they have created and will continue creating endlessly neologisms in the English language history.