Does Brexit mean Brexit? An analysis of the semantic field of the lexeme Brexit

Izabela Sekścińska

Łomża State University of Applied Sciences, Poland

Izabela Sekścińska is a lecturer at Łomża State University of Applied Sciences. Her main teaching areas are descriptive grammar of the English language and comparative linguistics. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in linguistics from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Her current research is in the area of neuroscience and psycholinguistics.


https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9974-0513

Agnieszka Piórkowska

Łomża State University of Applied Sciences, Poland

Agnieszka Piórkowska holds a Ph.D. in linguistics, and works as a lecturer at Łomża State University of Applied Sciences. Her research interests include cognitive investigation of modality and emotional attitude, as well as methodology of teaching English to young learners.


https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4890-8790


Abstract

The article presents the results of a discourse analysis of the contextual uses of Brexit. Based on corpus-driven Internet samples, the research employs the method of semantic field analysis devised by Robin (1980) and her team of researchers from the Saint-Cloud Political Lexicography Center. According to Robin, in order to find the meaning of a word, the context of its use must be analysed, as well as its lexical relations with other linguistic units. For this reason, we have divided the elements of the co-text of the lexeme Brexit into six groups, which represent various connections of linguistic items with the SUBJECT, i.e. the lexeme under scrutiny. Subsequently, in compliance with Kłosiński’s approach (1994), we propose the definitions of the SUBJECT which reflect the meanings featuring the actual usages of the lexeme Brexit and which integrate the key words from the semantic field of the concept in question

Keywords:

cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphors, emotions, melody and lyrics, popular music

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Published
2020-12-20


Sekścińska, I. and Piórkowska, A. (2020) “Does Brexit mean Brexit? An analysis of the semantic field of the lexeme Brexit”, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies, (31), pp. 66–87. doi: 10.15290/CR.2020.31.4.04.

Izabela Sekścińska 
Łomża State University of Applied Sciences, Poland

Izabela Sekścińska is a lecturer at Łomża State University of Applied Sciences. Her main teaching areas are descriptive grammar of the English language and comparative linguistics. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in linguistics from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Her current research is in the area of neuroscience and psycholinguistics.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9974-0513
Agnieszka Piórkowska 
Łomża State University of Applied Sciences, Poland

Agnieszka Piórkowska holds a Ph.D. in linguistics, and works as a lecturer at Łomża State University of Applied Sciences. Her research interests include cognitive investigation of modality and emotional attitude, as well as methodology of teaching English to young learners.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4890-8790