3 - Lexical change in twentieth-century English

Summary

Introduction

Lexical innovation is where linguistic change in progress is most obvious to the lay observer. It is also an area in which corpora have long been used systematically, both as resources for the regular updates of dictionaries and in academic linguistic work on new words. And not least, vocabulary is “the part of the language probably most affected by change” in the recent history of English (Romaine 1998: 2). Lexical obsolescence, the converse of innovation, is somewhat less spectacular but in principle equally accessible.

If there is one feature of the rich literature on neologisms in English which occasionally leaves the reader dissatisfied, it is that too often the focus is on individual words rather than general trends in the vocabulary, on the compilation of lists of disconnected items rather than the evolution of the underlying word-formation mechanisms. Scanning collections of new words in English, one usually cannot help being impressed by the ingenuity that goes into the coining of some words. On other occasions one will be shocked or amused by the more colorful importations into standard English from various subcultural slangs. But even as one savors the lists, there is a feeling that some of the forms recorded are curiosities, coined tongue in cheek and propagated as passing fads, especially in the media. In academic work on new words the collection and documentation of individual items is, thus, but a first step.