In July 2025, Melissa Schuring had the opportunity to present two papers at ICLC17, the Seventeenth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, held in Buenos Aires. The first paper, co-authored with Laura Rosseel and Eline Zenner, presented the concluding chapter of her PhD, focusing on age effects in children’s acquisition of the social meaning of English lexical elements in Dutch. The presentation sparked an interesting discussion on the need to pay greater attention to lexical variation in developmental sociolinguistics. The second paper reported on a kiki-bouba experiment, conducted with Karlien Franco, in which they investigated how iconicity influences the choice of neologisms participants proposed for fried snacks in Flanders. Melissa Schuring, an early-career researcher, thanks ENEOLI for the opportunity to participate in the conference and present her research.