A FREQUENCY AND DISTRIBUTION ANALYSIS OF SELECTED NEOLOGISMS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ENGLISH

This paper delves deeper into the linguistic behavior of neologisms in terms of their frequency of use across different genres and time periods. The focus is on a selection of neologisms that were included in the online dictionaries of American English in 2020. The corpus analysis was conducted using the NOW (News on the Web) and COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) data. It was determined that the target neologisms not only display different frequency counts across different time periods prior and post their inclusion in the dictionaries, but also show different distributions across the analyzed genres. Specifically, genres such as the web and blogs, or the spoken genre, show higher frequency counts compared to the remaining ones. At the same time, while certain neologisms show a continuous increase in frequency and stability throughout the analyzed time periods, others appear to be virtually nonexistent or maintain relatively low frequency counts. The results of this research have potential applications in certain lexicographic and teaching practices, as well as in more specific investigations of the latest linguistic phenomena.