Making sense of “buzzword” as a term through co-occurrences analysis

Elena N Malyuga,Wayne Rimmer

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07208

Abstract

The study argues that while the existing research on buzzwords mainly involves the functional and pragmatic analysis of their individual specimen, such as “engagement”, “synergy” or “development”, an alternative approach can be implemented to look into the nature and immediate implications behind the term in question. The suggested approach involves investigating the occurrences of the term proper as opposed to analysing individual buzzwords. The authors hypothise and demonstrate that linguistic context of the term “buzzword”, i.e. the peculiarities of its occurrence alongside different language units and patterns, may provide credible inferences concerning the key properties attached to the term and afford some illuminating perspective on the prevailing attitudes towards it. The study uses titles of research and newspaper articles retrieved from Google Scholar as material for the research due to better representation of the term in titles as opposed to full texts, as well as titles' higher informativity and better descriptive saturation. Apart from the prevailing focus on the immediate linguistic context surrounding the term, the inferences made in this study also stem from the frequency data showing how often a certain feature of buzzwords is being mentioned in the titles. The study showed that while the greatest emphasis is being placed on the field of use and temporal lifecycle of buzzwords, the attitudes towards them can be best of all described by examining the place of the term in oppositions. As illustrated in the paper, these oppositions reflect the idea of the term's inferior status by opposing it to more favourable concepts.

Highlights

The present paper deals with buzzwords, which are “importantsounding usually technical words or phrases often of little meaning used to impress laymen” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2019) and that “have become fashionable by being used a lot” (Online Cambridge Dictionary, 2019)
As literature review below will show, meticulous examination of individual vogue words is something that has been done extensively and from a variety of perspectives, which has contributed immensely to the research on buzzwords. This includes identifying their functions, tracing their etymology, specifying their meaning, coming up with a precise definition for the fashionable word in question, and even measuring people's ability to predict whether a certain word is going to create a buzz eventually. This line of research with the focus on individual vogue words found in various institutional narratives is covered amply in scientific literature and has provided grounds for specifying the key characteristics of buzzwords: they are coined within a certain community, they gain wide acceptance by being used a lot, they become fashionable as they grow popular, and their semantics is ambiguous for various reasons
The low percentage of unmarked occurrences may on its own be viewed as a telling argument suggesting that the term “buzzword” proper was rarely free of the superimposed assessments reflected in the immediately approximate language units in the sample

Summary

Introduction

The present paper deals with buzzwords, which are “importantsounding usually technical words or phrases often of little meaning used to impress laymen” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2019) and that “have become fashionable by being used a lot” (Online Cambridge Dictionary, 2019). As literature review below will show, meticulous examination of individual vogue words is something that has been done extensively and from a variety of perspectives, which has contributed immensely to the research on buzzwords This includes identifying their functions, tracing their etymology, specifying their meaning, coming up with a precise definition for the fashionable word in question, and even measuring people's ability to predict whether a certain word is going to create a buzz eventually. This line of research with the focus on individual vogue words found in various institutional narratives is covered amply in scientific literature and has provided grounds for specifying the key characteristics of buzzwords: they are coined within a certain (usually professional) community, they gain wide acceptance by being used a lot, they become fashionable as they grow popular, and their semantics is ambiguous for various reasons. A typical definition found in academic literature and dictionaries will read as follows:

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