Vitalija Kazlauskienė
Vilnius University, Lithuania

As part of the international conference Dictionnaires et culture numérique dans l’espace francophone (Toulouse, 12–13 June 2025), I had the honour of presenting a paper entitled Portrait de la mère dans les corpus contemporains : impact des pratiques lexicographiques numériques sur l’évolution des termes. This contribution stems from an ongoing research project on social neology, focusing particularly on neologisms related to motherhood and their treatment in digital lexicographic resources.

Drawing on contemporary French-language corpora (Frantext, CEFC, Leipzig Corpora Collection, SketchEngine), I analysed neological expressions such as mère porteuse, mère lesbienne, super-maman, mompreneur, and maman solo. These forms reflect deep societal transformations and evolving representations of motherhood in the Francophone world. While some of these terms are not new in form, their increasing frequency, semantic contextualisation, and expressive or polemical charge give them a neological status in discourse.

My talk focused on the tension between lexical innovation and institutional legitimation. By comparing several digital dictionaries – Wiktionnaire, Usito, Petit Robert en ligne, TLFi – I examined how certain social neologisms remain underrepresented in official lexicographic inventories, despite their attested use in everyday language. This raises questions about the role of dictionaries as both mirrors and agents of linguistic and cultural norms.

This conference, supported by the ENEOLI grant, provided an invaluable opportunity to engage with researchers working on collaborative and critical lexicography projects. The discussions highlighted neology as a marker of social change and as a methodological and epistemological challenge for digital lexicography.

I warmly thank the organisers for the intellectually stimulating atmosphere and the ENEOLI team for making this scholarly mobility possible.