When the old hides the new: Old words, new meanings

Abstract

In times of accelerated social change, it is immediately visible that words are created to register the new reality. At the same time, but in a generally invisible manner due to its largely unconscious process, old words acquire new meanings. While still in course, this is a semantic change of difficult detection. When detected, however, it provides important insights into the psychological transformations that inevitably happen during these periods of deep social change. Some of these semantic changes, brought about by the "digital revolution", were captured in recent researches. The present work aims at presenting them as well as at discussing their implications to psychology. © 2009 Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa.