Review of the book: Maradan, Mélanie. 2021. Uncertainty in Deliberate Lexical Interventions. Exploring Esperanto Speakers’ Opinions through Corpora. Berlin: Frank & Timme.

Abstract

This book is about neology, with a focus not on the products of lexical creation (neologisms, word coinages etc.), but rather on the opinions expressed by language users about potential new word forms / meanings. The key innovation of the study is that it analyses a representative corpus of written contributions from five different discussion forums in Esperanto (including opinions on competing technical terms, problematic dictionary entries, etc.). As stated by the author - Mélanie Maradan - the purpose of the study is to facilitate the work of 'language managers', that is to say those (often self-appointed) language experts who have taken upon themselves the task of maintaining the norms and standards of Esperanto. Throughout the book Maradan prefers this term to 'language planner'. It strikes this reviewer that this is an attempt to appropriate the theory and practices ofbmarketing studies, since the analogy of commercial business and ‘human resource management’ are a leitmotif that permeates many other sections of this work.