Today’s Usage of Neologisms in Social Media Communication

Abstract

Referring to a newly formed word that accommodates the usage of a language at aparticular time, the term neologism presents a relatively recent or isolated term, word,or phrase that may undergo the process of entering everyday usage, but that has notbeen fully accepted into language. They appear to be strongly influenced by changesin society, especially in culture and technology, and recently by rapid advancementsin internet-based communication. However, due to their significant use, they seem tobe widely and quickly accepted in social networking sites around the globe (Facebook,Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp). These social networking sites have had a significantimpact on everyone nowadays as they improve and speed up communication, fosterrelationships and also boost business ventures. The hypothesis of this paper states thatneologisms created by different morphological processes are excessively used ininternet-based communication, for which purpose the examples from four most popularsocial networks have been extracted and compared. The results of the analysis haveshown an extremely high percentage of the usage of neologisms in social networkingsites.

Keywords

• neologisms
• morphological processes
• internet-based communication
• social networking sites