Semantic change is a phenomenon that has been subject to a lot of research during the past few decades. However, a large part of the existing research has been conducted with the goal of finding causes of change or creating typologies in order to classify different types of changes. The present study has been conducted with the aim to examine how a specific extra-linguistic factor has affected a select few words. The extra-linguistic factor that is the focal point of this study is the rapid technological change during what is known as the digital revolution. This essay explores how the digital revolution has affected the uses of four words: bug, web, mouse,and cloud. The first part of this study was a collocational analysis of these four words. The results of the collocational analysis indicated that changes occurred during certain time periods. A closer context analysis was performed for each of the words on the time period during which a semantic change was suspected to occur. The findings of this essay are that all the examined words have gotten new technological meanings during the past 70 years, thus exhibiting semantic widening. All four words are currently polysemous words. Replacive change, meaning a change in the primary meaning of a word, is only apparent in web. The remaining words keep their primary senses throughout the examined period, and the new senses are added as periphery senses. The trends in the usage of these words indicate that it is possible that more of them will undergo replacive change, however, it is too early to tell.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-189593 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Andersson, Johan |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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