What were HIV virus and iPods before they became known as... exactly that?

“Having a name for it” is not just a matter of putting labels on objects and phenomena in the infinite variety of reality. It is a matter of identifying and making sense of such objects and phenomena, and in some sense, indeed, of creating them.

Most research into words and their meanings is focused on existing words and what they mean to us now, or – a bit closer to our current subject – on how children figure out the meaning of words that the rest of us have already learned. In this course, we take a somewhat different approach, focusing on how new words are created and gradually come tomean something still more specific to still more people encountering them in their everyday lives – until the point where most of us would say that we “know” the word and are quite familiar with the thing or phenomenon it denotes.

We will rely on selected insights gained in the latest empirical research in the fields of experimental psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, as well as more goal-oriented research into the creation and consumer acceptance of names for innovative commercial products, and the need for linguistic innovation e.g. in the coruse of EU legal integration. A key focus is the interplay between the built-in semantic potential of the word itself and the additional stimuli that affect our "online" sense-making and gradual concept formation when encountering it in running discourse, such as other texts and images on the package of novel products.

 

The course will supply the participants with new knowledge and operational tools for contributing constructively to such team enterprises as product idea development and implementation, and to meet the need for lexical innovation in the course of such activities as translation and organizational communication management.

Aitchison, J. (2003). Words in the mind. An introduction to the mental lexicon. 2^nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

Benches, R. (2006). Creative compounding in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Gill, T. & Dubé, L. (2007). “What is a leather iron or a bird phone? Using conceptual combinations to generate and understand new product concepts”. Journal of Consumer Psychology 17(3): 202-217.

Smith, V.; Møgelvanh-Hansen, P.; Hyldig, G. (2010). “Spin versus fair speak in food labelling: A matter of taste?” Food Quality and Preference 21(8): 1016-1025.