'My almost-leggings-so-I'm-kind-of-cheating jeans': Exploring hyphenated phrasal expressions in fashion discourse

Abstract

The language of fashion was first investigated by Roland Barthes in his influential book Système de la Mode, but it has since received scant attention from linguists, perhaps due to perceptions of frivolousness associated with the fashion world. This study explores contemporary fashion discourse through a systematic analysis of hyphenated phrasal expressions as linguistic features that are analytically challenging, but with strong expressive potential. The Fashion Discourse Corpus consists of 396,125 words compiled from the traditional fashion press (Vogue, Women's Wear Daily, Harper's Bazaar) and two leading fashion blogs, representing both American and British English. For comparative purposes, a reference corpus was extracted from American and British benchmark corpora. The quantitative analysis revealed that hyphenated phrasal expressions were considerably more frequent in the Fashion Discourse Corpus. Follow-up qualitative analysis identified conventional, semi-conventional, and non-conventional types, along with recurring structural patterns and communicative functions used to describe and evaluate fashion phenomena. The fashion blogs in particular contained richly expressive items that seemed to reflect the writer's unique voice and identity within the discourse community. The findings can be applied in journalism and communication courses to help aspiring writers learn to use hyphenated phrasal expressions effectively.