The use of blogs to

identify specialised

neologisms

The seventh EAFT Terminology Summit

Barcelona 27–28 November 2014

Marita Kristiansen

Norwegian School of Economics

Outline of presentation

1. Why harvest neologisms from blogs…?

2. Methodology

3. NHH researchers’ blogs

4. Peter Warren’s finance blog

5. Concluding remarks

2

1. Why harvest neologisms from blogs…?

• economic-administrative domains are typically dynamic due to

- rapid international market developments

- international initiatives to harmonise practices, concepts and the

specialised vocabulary (Fuertes-Olivera & Nielsen 2011; Kristiansen 2014)

neologisms emerge

• English it to an ever-increasing extent the lingua franca of

economic-administrative domains

- lack of updated literature in Norwegian

- current issues are debated in social media, i.e.,

Norwegian (online) newspapers and blogs

- Norwegian is used in these resources

neologisms emerge in Norwegian texts

3

2. Methodology…

• focus on specialised neologisms relevant within the

economic-administrative domains, and in particular

expressions originating from English either used as

- English loan words (anglicisms) in Norwegian (‘self-serving

biases’ or ‘subprime’),

- calques, such as ‘spill-over-effekter’ (‘spill-over effects’),

‘hedgefond’ (‘hedge fund’) or ‘multikanalsetting’ (‘multi-channel

setting’),

- or as Norwegian “substitute words” like ‘samskaping’ (‘co-

creation’), ‘kredittskvis’ (‘credit crunch’)

4

2. Methodology: Harvesting neologisms from

web-based corpora

5

The Norwegian Newspaper Corpus (NNC)

- established in 1998 (http://avis.uib.no)

- a self-expanding corpus consisting of Norwegian newspaper texts

(some 900 million words)

- updated automatically on a daily basis

- comprises 10 of the most central newspapers in Norway

• has a neology extractor which detects and produces lists of word

forms of newly harvested texts not previously recorded in the

NNC (i.e. some 5 million word forms)

• also makes a comparison towards a full-form lexicon derived

from the comprehensive dictionary Bokmålsordboka

6

The Norwegian Newspaper Corpus (NNC)

[1] … bankens tier 1 kapitalratio var 9,7 prosent, mens

egenkapitalgraden ("leverage ratio") var 3,1 prosent per 31.

desember ifjor. (DN140127)

the banks’ tier 1 capital ratio was 9.7 per cent, whereas the

leverage ratio was 3.1 per cent on 31 December last

year.

[2] I året som fulgte, begynte utlånere av høyrisikolån (såkalte

“subprimelån”) å melde seg konkurs (DA090106)

In the following year, lenders of high-risk loans (so-called

subprime loans) declared themselves bankrupt

7

3. NHH researchers’ blogs

• Crisis, restructuring and growth (KOV) http://blogg.nhh.no/kriseprogrammet

• Focus (Future-Oriented Corporate Solutions) http://blogg.nhh.no/focus/

• Center for Service Innovation (CSI) http://blogg.nhh.no/tjenesteinnovasjon/

8

Examples of harvested neologisms

9

Neologism categories in the NHH blogs

10

The use of the concept of co-creation in the

CSI blog

11

4. Peter Warren’s finance blog

• Peter Warrens finansblogg (PW) http://www.peterwarren.no/

12

Neologisms from the finance blog Example 1: Weather derivative

financial instrument used by companies to hedge against the

risk of weather-related losses (adapted from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/weatherderivative.asp)

[3] Værderivater gjør det eksempelvis mulig for bønder å

sikre seg mot økonomiske tap som følge av

temperatursvingninger som kan skade avlingene. (PW-

2013-04)

Weather derivatives make it for example possible for

farmers to hedge against losses caused by temperature

variations which may harm the crops.

13

Example 2: 'Catastrophe Bond - CAT'

a high-yield debt instrument that is usually insurance

linked and meant to raise money in case of a

catastrophe such as a hurricane or earthquake (adapted from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/catastrophebond.asp)

[4] Denne type obligasjon kalles «Cat-bond» som er en forkortelse

for «Catastrophe Bond», eller katastrofeobligasjon på norsk.

(PW-2014-06)

This type of bond is called «cat-bond» which is short for

«catastrophe bond»…

14

Example 3: Liborgate

a rate-fixing scandal connected to the Libor (London Interbank

Offered Rate - an average interest rate calculated through

submissions of interest rates by major banks in London). Libor is

a benchmark that gives a daily indication of 150 different interest

rates at which leading banks obtain (adapted from www.ft.com)

[5] Liborgate kan være saken som endelig vekker politikere og

myndigheter fra dvalen. (PW-2012-07)

Liborgate may be the case which will finally wake politicians

and authorities from their sleep.

15

5. Concluding remarks

Based on the harvesting of neologisms so far, the findings

indicate that

• the number of relevant neologisms which are detected is high

• many neologisms are Norwegian economic-administrative

term candidates

• the methodology developed provides valuable data for

specialised dictionaries or termbases

• when comparing the newspapers with the blogs, there is

- more term variation in the newspapers

- the blogs are sometimes earlier in discussing new topics and

concepts

16

References Andersen, G. and K. Hofland. 2012. Building a large corpus based on newspapers from the

web. In Andersen, G. (ed). Exploring Newspaper Language - Using the web to create and

investigate a large corpus of modern Norwegian. Amsterdam/New York: John Benjamins, 1–

28.

BusinessDictionary.com <http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/> (13.08.2015).

Center for Service Innovation < http://blogg.nhh.no/tjenesteinnovasjon/> (28.10.2012).

Crisis, restructuring and growth. <http://blogg.nhh.no/kriseprogrammet/> (13.02.2014).

Focus <http://blogg.nhh.no/focus/> (28.10.2012).

Fuertes-Olivera, P. A. and S. Nielsen. (2011). The dynamics of terms in accounting: What the

construction of the accounting dictionaries reveals about metaphorical terms in culture-

bound subject fields. Terminology 17 (1) 2011, 157–180.

investorpedia.com <www.investopedia.com/terms/ > (21.11.2014).

Kristiansen, M. and G. Andersen. 2012. Corpus approaches to neology and their relevance for

dynamic domains. In Neologica 6/2012, 43–62.

Kristiansen, M. 2014. Concept change, term dynamics and cultural boundedness in economic-

administrative domains. In Temmerman, R. & M. Van Campenhoudt (eds) Dynamics and

Terminology. An interdisciplinary perspective on monolingual and multilingual culture-bound

communication. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 235–256.

Kristiansen, M. 2012a. Detecting specialised neologisms in researchers’ blogs. In Oakes, M.,

Ch. Johannsson & L. Hareide (eds). The many facets of corpus linguistics in Bergen.

Bergen: BeLLs, 125–136.

17

References Kristiansen, M. 2012b. Using web-based corpora to find Norwegian specialised neologies. In

Communication and Language at Work 1/2012, 10–19.

Kristiansen, M. 2012c. Financial jargon in a general newspaper corpus. In Andersen, G. (ed).

Exploring Newspaper Language. Using the web to create and investigate a large corpus of

modern Norwegian. Amsterdam/New York: John Benjamins, 257–283.

Kristiansen, M. 2011. Domain dynamics in scholarly areas. How external pressure may cause

concept and term changes. In Temmerman, R. and M. Van Campenhoudt (eds). The

Dynamics of Terms in Specialized Communication. An Interdisciplinary Perspective.

Terminology 17(1)2011, 30–48.

Kristiansen, M. 2010. Language Planning in Higher Education. The Case of Microeconomics.

In H., C. and J. Engberg (eds). Online proceedings from the XVII European LSP Symposium

2009. <http://www.asb.dk/fileadmin/www.asb.dk/isek/kristiansen.pdf. 1–13> (07.04.2015).

NHH Blogg <http://blogg.nhh.no /> (07.04.2015).

Norsk i Hundre. < http://www.sprakrad.no/upload/9832/norsk_i_hundre> pdf>

Norwegian newspaper corpus < http://avis.uib.no> (07.04.2015).

Ot.prp. nr. 71 (2008-2009) Om lov om endringer i lov 1. april 2005 nr. 15 om universiteter og

høyskoler. < http://tinyurl.com/6wo2bj4> (07.04.2015).

Peter Warrens finansblogg < http://www.peterwarren.no/> (07.04.2015).

Report no. 13 to the Storting (2005-2006) Kredittmeldinga 2005. <http://tinyurl.com/7s5flmx>

(07.04.2015).

Report no. 35 to the Storting (2007-2008) Mål og meining. Ein heilskapleg norsk språkpolitikk.

< http://tinyurl.com/79ng68t> (07.04.2015).

18