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“Near-synonymy is the study of semantic relations between lexemes or constructions that possess a similar usage” (Glynn 2010: 2; Lyons 1995:60; Divjak 2006:21). In this study two near-synonyms awesome and wicked are to be looked more closely at. Near-synonyms have similar meanings but they do not mean exactly the same. The aim of the study is to try to locate whether such small differences in mean

The close relationship between culture and language has been captivating humans since ancient times and various schools of thought have offered different approaches. Cognitive Linguistics holds the view that language is a socially constructed phenomenon. Members of a given speech community experience the world in more or less similar way as they speak one language. By means of commonly shared view

The word lagom fills the Swedes with a certain sense of pride. It is felt to be a truly Swedish word which often is allowed to represent the notion of Sweden and the Swedish way of being. Not only is the usage of the word widespread in the Swedish language but it has an extensive range of senses. It is this polysemy of the word that may create difficulties in translations from Swedish to English;

The original aim for this case study was to look at how two synonymous lexemes, feminine and womanly, have varied in meaning over time in both British and American literature and also, to see if there was a difference in the usage of the lexemes depending on whether the author was male or female. As can be read in Lyons (1995: 60), lexemes like feminine and womanly would be called near-synonyms in

In today’s society there is an obsession with finding happiness. According to the coca-cola company, all you need to do is open happiness1, but why stop with a can of coke when you can find your happiness on a dating site. It even seems to come in edible form in your local shop. But what exactly is happiness? De Saussure spoke of “the arbitrary nature of the sign” as a two part model; “the signifi

The issues of body shape and living up to an ideal is a topic not only commonly discussed in the media but also a subject occupying many peoples’ minds on an everyday basis. Eating disorders are common and obesity is an increasing topic for discussion. The media shows images of tall and increasingly slim models while statistics indicate that the average person is gaining weight over time. Dictiona

People have had dreams since time immemorial. The Bible‘s Genesis tells us about Joseph‘s dreams, Greek mythology describes the God Asclepius and his dream-healing rituals, at the turn of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, J.T. Adams coined the term ‗American Dream‘ in the 1930s and in the 1960‘s, Martin Luther King gave his famous ‗I have a dream‘ speech. It i

William Wallace was what was generally considered to be a hero. With deceptive military tactics, enormous bravery and a national feeling beyond the normal, he is truly the concept of a true hero. One interesting aspect is that you often hear people say that their mother is their true hero. Furthermore, they may tell you that their mother is also their idol. What has happened to the original usage

Polysemy, the study of multiple meanings of a lexeme, is part of the field of Lexical Semantics and has been preoccupying linguists for a very long time. Among the first methods of investigation were categorization (Lakoff 1987), and the study of dictionaries in hopes of finding semantic variation in polysemous lexemes (Fillmore and Atkins 1992). In present time however, due to new technology, mor

How does the English verb become translate into Spanish? The many ways of translating the English verb become to Spanish depend on different conditions. In order to express to become in Spanish it is necessary to address what a certain thing or person becomes. It is likely that the correspondence between the English verb become and the four selected Spanish verbs convertirse, hacerse, volverse and

Using the modern cognitive linguistic framework of recorded corpora data, this essay attempts to investigate the political climate in American domestic politics as it is represented by media in the form of newspapers. By approaching the language usage of media in a linguistically holistic way I aim to elicit subtle attitudes towards ideologies present in news press articles. This approach is carri

While discussing the possibility of investigating the polysemy of an English profanity as the topic for this essay, Dylan Glynn, who is supervising this work, pointed to an (albeit old) edition of an Oxford English Dictionary resting on a shelf in his office in order to look up the definition[s] of the lexeme fuck. However, the entry was nowhere to be found, and this only added to the interest of

Beer is one of the oldest and most beloved beverages in the world (Hampson 2008). According to the first records of brewing, beer was originally made in Mesopotamia over 8000 years ago (Hampson, 2008). Although, back then there was a religious side to it and beer was consumed in spiritual ceremonies to honour the gods. However, the enjoyment of drinking this infusion was even greeter and it soon b

more and more people being bilingual. Two languages that are often mixed in the United States are English and Spanish. Due to the high population of Spanish speaking immigrants, new words are being formed by mixing the two languages. This can be heard in the areas near the border between the USA and Mexico among other areas. The verb watch in English, which in Spanish would be mirar, becomes wacha

The purpose of this study was to explore how social workers drug preventive work among youths is formed and how professionals talk about and what conceptions they have about drug using youths. Our focus has been on drug preventive work on youths between the ages of 12-25. We have chosen this age limit since the professionals daily work is with youths between this age span. To answer our studies qu

Earlier, linguists have treated conceptual metaphor and conceptual blend as two separate phenomena. Recent research, however, has brought more and more attention to similarities between these phenomena. This study intends to shed more light on such similarities in the underlying creation process and aims to detect common preconditions. A corpus-driven analysis, incorporating 50 advertisements repr