Morphological Processes of Neologisms in Social Media Among the Public Figures

Abstract

This article investigated the morphological processes involved in the neologisms used by the public figures in social media. Language has seemed to evolve with the help of technologies especially English language which is the Lingua Franca in this digital platform. The Internet users or the ‘netizens’ tend to generate new words and phrases as part of their digital communication literacy. This trending phenomenon has created numerous forms of neologisms which somehow the new words created are used widely. The neologisms were collected and analyzed from the public figures through three social media applications which are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The morphological processes of the samples collected are analyzed qualitatively. The data of the study are analyzed to determine the types of processes that are frequently employed to form neologisms. The results are used to determine which morphological processes are most frequently used in forming neologisms in social media. From the study conducted, the result shows that blending process has the highest frequency among the eleven morphological processes selected and followed by acronym. As such, this paper intends to describe only one morphological process that obtains the highest occurrence, which is blending process.