New Words and New Meanings on Facebook: a Lexical Prgmatics Analysis
Abstract
This thesis presents the results of a linguistic study on the language used on Facebook. The study follows the {i'amework of lexical pragmatics. What the study aimed at was to examine new words and new meaning on Facebook. The results revealed that there are new words formed and used on Facebook. Meaning of some existing words was also found to change and the lexical pragmatic theory could adequately be used to analyze the data collected.
The thesis is organized in such a way that chapter one gives the introduction, background to the study statement of the problem, objectives, hypotheses, scope and limitations, theoretical framework, literature review, methodology and conclusion. Chapter two focuses on words. Here word formation processes were critically examined vis-a-vis the data collected. This was done to find out whether there were patterns governing the formation of these new lexical items.
Chapter three concentrates on meaning. Meanings of several lexical items used on Facebook were examined. This was to establish the word meaning change on Facebook. Chapter four tested the theory. It subjected the data to the theory and a detailed analysis provided. This was done to see whether the processes of lexical pragmatics could adequately analyze the data. Finally, a summary of findings and recommendations was presented in chapter five.
Publisher
University of Nairobi, Kenya