A Linguistic Investigation of English Buzzwords Associated with Barack Obama
Abstract: The present thesis studies the morphology and lexical semantics of the many buzzwords associated with Barack Obama. First of all, it is found that blending is the most productive in the word-formation rules used in the creation of the ten buzzwords. Second, by making a comparison between their contextual meanings (concordance lines of instances searched in Google) and dictionary definitions of the suffixes, an overall characterization of the emergent view of lexical semantics of “Obama” buzzwords is proposed. And one significant feature of the ten buzzwords is that they share the same semantic basis—the charisma and influential image of Barack Obama.
Key words: morphology, emergent semantics, Obama, buzzword
英文术语词汇研究与贝拉克.奥巴马
摘 要 本论文考察了新闻英语中以政治明星Barak Obama的名字Obama为词根构成的部分流行词的形态和语义特点。首先对这些词的形态结构进行了描写，发现紧缩法是其中最主要的构词方法。在语义分析方面，在结合语源和字典定义的同时，又利用动态语义学(Emergent Semantics)的手法（如考察词语在真实环境中的共现成分）。研究发现，这些流行词有共同的语义基础，即Obama的个人魅力和公众影响力。
关 键 词 形态学；动态语义学；奥巴马；流行语
Contents
Abstract 1
摘 要 1
1 Ten variations in “Obama” buzzwords 3
1.1 Introduction 3
1.1.1 Definition of buzzwords 3
1.1.2 Background information about Barack Obama 5
1.1.3 The ten words’ entrance into the English language 5
1.2 Previous studies of new words 6
1.3 Organization of the thesis 7
2 The morphology and lexical semantics of the ten words 7
2.1 The word-formation of the ten words 7
2.2 Lexical meanings of the ten words 8
2.3 Semantic basis of the ten words 19
3 Conclusion 20
3.1 Summary of the main points of the thesis 20
3.2 Possibilities for further studies 21
References 23
Acknowledgements 24
