Neologisms and Polysemy in Social Media: A Morpho-Semantic Analysis

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effect of using social networks onto the language of users in terms of word meanings and forms. Hence, this research is a linguistic study of the morphological characteristics of the language of social media through vivid examples from daily posts on social media. It looks into the role of social media in improving or worsening the linguistic performance of users. The research deals with up-to-date data in order to be examined from a morphological perspective. Due to the presence of large platforms of social networking sites, this study will be limited to neologisms in a specific media applications, Twitter and Facebook that are basically written in or deviated from English language. The sample of the study consists of random users of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and other applications that people usually use to communicate. The theory of morphological productivity is employed in the study to reach a conclusion on the most frequently used word formation processes that lead to social media neologisms. Results of the study indicate that social media and communication applications often determine the users" choice of words.