FEATURED NEOLOGISM:

Rather than selecting a single lexical unit, my favourite “neologism” is, in a sense, the concept of neologism itself, together with “neology”. From a personal and academic perspective, these two terms marked a turning point in my learning trajectory as a student of Spanish linguistics. I vividly remember encountering for the first time Alvar Ezquerra’s (1994: 11) reflection on word formation in Spanish, where neology is described as a process of double sign: one that simultaneously relies on the linguistic code and subverts it, recognizes the norm while transgressing it, and creates new words according to rules that are themselves reshaped by creativity. (Text in Spanish: “En definitiva, esos son los procedimientos de la neología, que no es sino una tendencia de doble signo, aparentemente contradictoria, pues a la vez se utiliza el código lingüístico y hay una subversión contra él, se reconoce la norma y se transgrede, se crean palabras con arreglo a unas reglas pero esa creatividad cambia las propias reglas.”) This apparent contradiction deeply resonated with me, as it captured the dynamic tension between system and change, stability and innovation, that characterizes living languages, an to some extent, my own “neological” growth. Since then, neologism and neology have ceased to be mere technical terms and have become the conceptual lens through which I understand lexical change, social meaning, and my own academic development, ultimately motivating my decision to immerse myself in neological studies.

I am a doctoral student in the Department of Translation and Language Sciences of the Pompeu Fabra University, with undergraduate and master’s training in Hispanic Philology at Tianjin Foreign Studies University and Shanghai International Studies University. Throughout my academic trajectory, my work has consistently focused on lexical units as sites of meaning construction, cultural mediation, and social conceptualization.
My bachelor’s thesis addressed the Spanish translation of chengyu appearing in Mo Yan’s novel Red Sorghum Clan, with a particular focus on phraseological units, figurative language, and culture-specific meanings. Through the analysis of translation strategies used to render these highly condensed and conventionalized expressions into Spanish, this study allowed me to explore how lexicalized units encode shared cultural knowledge and how conceptual and evaluative content is negotiated across languages.
At master’s level, I consolidated my interest in lexical innovation through a contrastive morphological study of neologisms in Chinese and Spanish during the period 2011–2020. Based on data extracted from BOBNEO and the Dictionary of Neologisms in Chinese (Hou, 2023), my master’s thesis constituted my first systematic and corpus-based approach to neological research. This work aligns directly with the objectives of neological observatories, as it involved the identification, classification, and analysis of emerging lexical units, as well as reflection on their degree of stabilization and potential for dictionary inclusion.
I have recently begun my PhD under the supervision of Judit Freixa. My doctoral research is situated within the fields of lexicology and neology and addresses the linguistic denomination of affective polarization. Starting from the observation that intensified contact between heterogeneous social realities favours the emergence and visibility of attitudes of rejection and identification, the study examines how such attitudes are reflected in language through denominations that not only name phenomena, but also convey values, ideological positioning, and socially shared conceptualizations.
The dissertation focuses on lexical units and neologisms formed with the final combining forms -phobia (-fòbia) and -philia (-fília) in Spanish and Catalan, as well as on their functional equivalents in Mandarin Chinese. From a contrastive perspective that is closely aligned with the aims of ENEOLI, the research plans to examine the productivity, diffusion, and institutionalization of these formations in contemporary discourse, as well as the criteria that favour their inclusion in academic and general dictionaries. English is used as a constant background reference in order to situate the observed patterns within a broader international and terminological context.
Methodologically, the study is based on the analysis of general and specialized corpora, press databases, and academic dictionaries, and adopts procedures that are compatible with neological monitoring and comparative lexicological research. On the basis of the data obtained for Spanish and Catalan, a functionally parallel corpus in Mandarin Chinese is constructed, allowing for the analysis of denominative strategies in a typologically distinct language and facilitating cross-linguistic comparison within international neology networks.
From a contrastive perspective, the dissertation pursues a twofold objective. At a descriptive level, it seeks to distinguish between phobia and philia concepts that appear to have a potentially universal scope and those that are more culturally specific, whose denomination, productivity, and degree of lexicalization vary across languages. At a more theoretical level, beyond tracing the neological evolution of the combining forms under study, the research aims to contribute to discussions within ENEOLI on the relationship between denomination, conceptualization, and social visibility, showing that while lexicalized denominations may reinforce the consolidation of concepts, they are not a prerequisite for their cognitive or social existence.
As an applied outcome, the thesis aspires to offer a structured quadrilingual repertory of phobia and philia denominations in Spanish, Catalan, English and Mandarin Chinese, designed to be compatible with neological databases and observatory practices. By highlighting both shared patterns and denominative asymmetries, this repertory aims to contribute to the comparative and international dimension of neology promoted by ENEOLI and to support future cross-linguistic research on socially sensitive neologisms.