Social Networks: A Source of Lexical Innovation and Creativity in Contemporary Peninsular Spanish

Beatriz Rodríguez Arrizabalaga

doi:10.3390/languages6030138

Abstract

There is no doubt that the Internet, where English is ubiquitous, has revolutionized our way of life. Socially, it has opened frontiers to such an extent that nowadays human beings can be permanently connected, no matter the distance between them, in virtual encounters where social networks play a crucial role. Linguistically, on the other hand, it has created a new global language which combines properties of written and oral speech. The Internet’s lexical level, in particular, is described as extremely innovative, creative and playful since it is full of neologisms, many of which are Anglicisms, coined to name the new realities constantly brought along with the evolution of the digital world. In order to demonstrate that social networks are indeed the source of a wide array of creative and playful neological Anglicisms in Peninsular Spanish, we have carried out a corpus-based analysis of the names of five current social and interactive forms of Internet communication in two contemporary Spanish corpora; specifically, that of the indirect social network generically known as the blog and those of the direct social networks Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp. Our study focuses, specifically, on four facets of these neological Anglicisms: (i) their date of introduction into the language; (ii) their frequency of occurrence; (iii) their diverse spellings; and (iv) finally, the different word-formation processes they enter.

Highlights

There are two unquestionable facts in our present globalized world and era that prove that Crystal’s (2001) hypothesis about the socio-linguistic revolution brought along with the birth of the Internet holds true
Through an exhaustive corpus-based study of the names of five well-known networking services—blog, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp—in Peninsular Spanish, this paper analyzes the neological Anglicisms derived from the names of the aforementioned social networking services, paying special attention to the following topics: (i) their date of introduction into the language; (ii) their frequency of occurrence; (iii) the diverse spellings they exhibit; (iv) and, the different word-formation processes they undergo in this particular variety of Spanish
In order to reach our aim, we have carried out an analysis of the names of five wellknown social networks—blogs, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp—in two different contemporary Spanish corpora—the last version of the Spanish Royal Academy Corpus del español del siglo XXI, commonly known as CORPES XXI (2021), and Davies’s (2016) Corpus del español—whose main general features are summarized in Table 1: Table 1

Summary

Introduction

There are two unquestionable facts in our present globalized world and era that prove that Crystal’s (2001) hypothesis about the socio-linguistic revolution brought along with the birth of the Internet holds true. Through an exhaustive corpus-based study of the names of five well-known networking services—blog, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp—in Peninsular Spanish, this paper analyzes the neological Anglicisms derived from the names of the aforementioned social networking services, paying special attention to the following topics: (i) their date of introduction into the language; (ii) their frequency of occurrence; (iii) the diverse spellings they exhibit; (iv) and, the different word-formation processes they undergo in this particular variety of Spanish. In addition to this introduction, the present paper contains four other sections. The concluding section gathers the most significant issues raised in our analysis and justifies the neological status of the Anglicisms analyzed

Methods

Results

Conclusion