![]()
II Linguistic Techniques of Wordplay
![]()
Vincent Renner
Lexical Blending as Wordplay
Abstract: This article deals with wordplay in word-formation and centers on lexical blending. It claims that, because of their very formation process, lexical blends are instances of wordplay. Drawing on examples from a variety of languages, it offers a categorization of the different features which may be argued to increase wordplayfulness into five classes: formal complexity, structural transgression, graphic play on words, semantic play on words, and functional ludicity.
Keywords: backronymy, Basque, clipping, compounding, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Latvian, lexical blending, ludic function (of language), Malay, Mandarin Chinese, Modern Greek, Modern Hebrew, naming function, Polish, Serbian, Spanish, word-formation
1Introduction: Wordplay in Word-Formation
We play with language when we manipulate it as a source of enjoyment [ā¦]. I mean āmanipulateā literally: we take some linguistic feature [ā¦] and make it do things it does not normally do. David Crystal (2001: 1)
The aim of this article is to apply the concept of wordplay to the linguistic domain of word-formation. The definition of wordplay adopted for this research is the following: an intentional and formally ingenious way of associating the semantics of two or more words in a new morphological object. It only partially overlaps with the definition of word-creation as described by Ronneberger-Sibold (2010). Word-creation is centered on the concept of formal creativity and it encompasses all intentional extra-grammatical morphological processes, i.e. operations in which the output form is not fully predictable from an input and a given rule and is impervious to (un)grammaticality judgments. If lexical blending can be said to be a technique which is both creative and playful, clipping is creative but is not playful (wordplay as defined above crucially involves two inputs) while compounding can be playful ā as in the case of metaphtonymic echo compounds (see below) ā but is not creative in the sense of Ronneberger-Sibold as it is a concatenative process.
Several types of outputs can illustrate wordplay in word-formation, for instance metaphtonymic echo compounds, backronyms and lexical blends.111 Metaphtonymic echo compounding consists in concatenating words which are formally quasi-identical into a metonymy- and / or metaphor-based compound. Formal variation may appear at the onset (1)ā(5) ā the compounding elements have the same rime or superrime ā or word-internally in case of medial vocalic alternation (6):
| (1) | Aga saga āmiddle-class novelā112 |
| (2) | brain drain āloss of skilled laborā |
| (3) | kick flick āmartial arts movieā |
| (4) | sin bin āpenalty boxā |
| (5) | trout pout ācollagen-enhanced lipsā |
| (6) | shit sheet ānegative campaign flyerā |
Backronymy is a playful process in which the operation of initialization leads to an already existing word, as in (7)ā(11):
| (7) | ALICE < all-purpose lightweight individual carrying equipment |
| (8) | MACHO < massive compact halo object |
| (9) | SQUID < superconducting quantum interference device |
| (10) | WASP < White Anglo-Saxon Protestant |
| (11) | WIMP < weakly interacting massive particle |
Playfulness is increased when the meaning of the earlier word is associated with that of the new backronym, as in (12)ā(16):
| (12) | BASIC < beginnersā all-purpose symbolic instruction code āeasy-to-learn programming language designed to provide computer access to non-science studentsā |
| (13) | GIFT < gamete intra-fallopian transfer āassisted reproductive technique against infertilityā |
| (14) | RIDE < reduce impaired driving in Etobicoke113 ācampaign against drink-drivingā |
| (15) | START < strategic arms reduction treaty ātreaty intended to stop the nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Unionā |
| (16) | USA PATRIOT < uniting (and) strengthening America (by) providing appropriate tools required (to) intercept (and) obstruct terrorism āAct of the US Congress signed into law in October 2011, in the wake of 9 / 11ā |
Lexical blending refers to the act of coalescing several words into one after an act of clipping (17), of overlapping (18), or of both clipping and overlapping (19)114:
| (17) | caplet < capsule + tablet |
| (18) | sexpert < sex + expert |
| (19) | positron < positive + electron |
Because of the wide variety of attested patterns, blending can be claimed to be the most complex form of wordplay in word-formation, and this article aims to lay bare these formal intricacies. In the following section, the salient formal and semantic features of lexical blends are introduced, and in Section 3 a detailed taxonomy of playful techniques is then proposed.
2A Brief Description of Lexical Blends
Lexical blends crop up in a variety of domains, from slang (20) to technoscientific terminology (21), from popular media culture (22) to the corporate world (23)ā(24):
| (20) | chillax < chill + relax |
| (21) | disulfiram < disulfide + tetraethylthiuram |
| (22) | Merkozy < (Angela) Merkel + (Nicolas) Sarkozy |
| (23) | Gemalto < Gemplus + Axalto |
| (24) | ABB < ASEA (< AllmƤnna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget) + BBC (< Brown, Boveri and Cie) |
Blending is a cross-linguistically widespread process. Brdar-Szabo and Brdar (2008) hypothesize that it can appear in any language in which compounding and clipping are both attested morphological operations. The phenomenon is mainly documented in Indo-European languages, but it is also observed in languages as typologically diverse as Korean (Kang 2013), Malay (Dobrovolsky 2001), Mandarin Chinese (Ronneberger-Sibold 2012) and Modern Hebrew (Bat-El 2013).
The precise definition of lexical blending is not beyond debate. Some morphologists consider that a lexical item qualifies as a member of the category if at least one source word has been clipped in the blending process (e.g. Mattiello 2013; Miller 2014), but others exclude several types of complex words on various grounds:
| ā | for Ralli and Xydopoulos (2012) and Villoing (2012), a complex word is to be categorized as a blend only if no source word has remained intact, which leads to the exclusion of items such as contrail (< condensation + trail) and tenoroon (< tenor + bassoon); |
| ā | for Bat-El (2006), a complex word is unequivocally a blend only if clipping occurs at the āinner edges,ā i.e. if the left source word has been back-clipped and the right one fore-clipped, which leads to the exclusion of items such as modem (< modulator + demodulator) and frohawk (< afro + mohawk); |
| ā | for Dressler (2000), complex words whose source words are not semantically coordinate (i.e. are in a modifier-head relation), such as rockumentary (< rock + documentary) and wallyball (< wall + volleyball... |
