Although the term ‘lexeme’ is of increasing importance in linguistics, the term is often not defined in a way which allows for firm decisions about where its boundaries lie. Various points of contention are illustrated, and it is shown that French and anglophone traditions on the nature of the lexeme differ.

The effect of phonetics on word-formation in phonaesthemes, diminutives and the influence of rhyme are discussed. A new way of looking at phonaesthemes is proposed, to avoid some contradictory findings.

Although stipulating what category a particular phenomenon illustrates rather than presenting arguments for the conclusion does not seem like a good way to carry out science, stipulation is frequent in linguistics, not only for categories like inflection, derivation and compound, but also notably for word-classes.

This chapter investigates the normative impact of UX writers’ language work by discussing how they craft particular audiences through their work. As such, this chapter turns to the textual products that UX writers create. My analysis focuses on a particularly impactful example of this work, the texts produced for cookie consent notices. Examining the kinds of audiences and addressees that surface in and through these texts, I suggest, can help scholars consider how digital media entail not just traditional notions of audience design but also a more explicit and active crafting of audiences, whereby some people are constructed as audiences and others not. Specifically, I discuss how automated participant roles, the stylization of users, as well as the design of imposed interaction lead to an encoding of both specific participant roles as well as particular social identities in software interfaces. Ultimately, I suggest that this may be understood as a form of symbolic violence, whereby the software interface is used as a means to impose not just an interaction order but also a particular social order onto users.

This chapter provides an introduction to the book, defining the topic to be discussed, and looking at alternative ways of approaching it.

This chapter offers an introduction to UX writing and to the theoretical framing of the book. First, I outline my understanding of digital media as cultural-political artefacts, drawing attention to the fact that digital media are not neutral but inscribed with particular norms and identities. I establish this position by reviewing literature from digital discourse studies, media and communication studies, cultural studies of technology, as well as posthumanism, placing particular emphasis on software interfaces as designed sites where power is exercised. This brings me to the second part of my theoretical framing: how language is taken up as a resource in the design of software interfaces. In this regard, I orient to critical sociolinguistic scholarship on language work. I briefly outline my position in this field, aligning with scholarship that orients to Bourdieu’s conceptualization of capital and the linguistic marketplace. Additionally, I reflect on the status of UX writers as elite language workers or wordsmiths and how such (more) privileged language work hinges on its behind-the-scenes nature while nonetheless being instrumental in shaping social norms and values.

This chapter addresses the interplay of invisibility, status, and power in UX writing. My aim in the chapter is twofold. First, I am interested in how UX writers understand and negotiate the (in)visibility of language in their own work. Tracing the semiotic ideologies of these professional language workers, I discuss how UX writers operationalize a discursive ideal of invisible writing in order to establish the value of their linguistic work vis-à-vis their colleagues, who typically privilege other modes of meaning making. Second, I examine how UX writers make sense of the linguistic and cultural-political consequences of this invisibility. In this regard, I suggest that the ideal of an invisible interface is a central media ideology that not only structures the work of UX writers but ultimately determines how ordinary users can(not) communicate with and through digital media. I conclude by linking my case study to broader discussions of invisibility in cultural studies of technology, arguing that communication with and through digital media is shaped not only by users’ perspectives but also by the semiotic and media ideologies of its producers.

While borrowing from most languages does not affect the structure of English word-formation, the number of Greek and Latin loans and new words based on them is so overwhelming that new types of word-formation are created. Because loans and English (or other European) uses of the patterns do not always provide the same outputs, and because classical elements can be added to English elements, the neoclassical formations are difficult to describe.

Although many new words occur in texts without attracting comment, there is evidence that people are aware of novelty in word-formation, and thus recognize new coinages

This chapter raises the question of why we need to study word-formation as well as other linguistic structures, why word-formation is different and what makes word-formation different.

Some words which might seem to be possible words are not used, because sometimes such words never become part of the norm. On the other hand, some words which do not appear to be possible words are used. Just how a possible word is to be defined is not clear, but the norm does appear to be a factor affecting the productivity of morphological processes.

While discussions of English tend to treat examples like pre- and post-war as a matter of coordination, German studies of parallel examples tend to treat them as matters of deletion under identity. The two different approaches give rise to different insights, though neither is perfect. The relevant constructions involve both derivatives and compounds, but constraints are hard to pin down.

In this chapter some of the problems facing the scholar of word-formation are considered, including the nature of the word, the boundaries of word-formation, the question of productivity and problems with determining the nature of evidence for it, whether word-formation is defined by rules, some proposed constraints on word-formation and whether word-formation is part of morphology.