The meaning of e-: Neologisms as markers of culture and technology.

摘要

New words or neologisms have a natural capacity to mark the historical and cultural changes of a community by recording the new ideas, thoughts and inventions that are introduced into society. Technology and the Internet are the most prolific sources of neologisms. In particular the prefix e- has spawned a seemingly endless supply of new words such as e-mail, e-commerce, e-vite, etc.; This MA thesis considers what the prefix e- means, how productive it is, how we are using e-words and what these words signal about our attitudes towards computers and technology including the influence of the dot.com boom and bust on our language. This research uses combined methodologies from lexicography, corpus linguistics, communication studies, English and cultural studies.; The results support the key finding that our attitudes towards technology (as reflected in our use of e-words) have changed from positive to negative associations after the dot.com crash.