Neologisms: Semiotic Deconstruction of the New Words “Lizardy,” “Staycation,” and “Wannarexia” as Peircean Indexes of Culture

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Author(s): Joel West (University of Toronto, Canada)
Copyright: 2018
Pages: 12
Source title: Empirical Research on Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Marcel Danesi (University of Toronto, Canada)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-5622-0.ch009

Keywords: Digital Communications / Information Science Reference / Media & Communications

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Abstract

While people use language to let others know how and what it is that we think, language is also the means by, and also the substrate within which, humans think. This chapter explores the use of language as the basis for cognition, based on both a chosen word's denotative meaning and also its rhetorical (metaphorical) connotative meanings. The artificial dichotomy between language and speech is deconstructed. Peircean semiotics is used to argue that language is indexical in its primary referential functions, including sociolinguistic functions. Three new words, all of which were coined in the twenty-first century, are examined from a sociolinguistic and a semiotic point of view.

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Neologisms: Semiotic Deconstruction of the New Words “Lizardy,” “Staycation,” and “Wannarexia” as Peircean Indexes of Culture

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