Expressivity and the Lexicon

Abstract This chapter considers the role of lexis in expressivity. It begins with a discussion of poeticity and estrangement in everyday speech and identifies an “estrangeative” as an illocutionary act in which a speaker evaluates the expressive sufficiency of standard English negatively and replaces standard language with expressive language. The chapter then samples various morphological and morphosyntactic strategies for amplifying lexical expressivity, including blends or portmanteau words, suffixation, initialism, and acronymy, and the estranging cases of much (e.g., Pathetic much?) and because (e.g., This chapter is interesting because lexical expressivity). While some words are blatantly expressive, those often prove less effective than more subtly estranging words, aligning lexical expressivity with the Principle of Least Effort. The chapter concludes with contrasting dictionary treatments of expressive words, which reveal language ideologies in response to expressivity.