The Armed Political Conflict: A Determining Factor for Neological Creation in the Colombian Spanish Variant

Abstract

The aim of this study is threefold: to show how the country’s armed political confl ict has generated a great number of neologisms in the Spanish variant of Colombia, categorize these neologisms in light of the typology of the armed conflict, and show the frequency of occurrence in their formation processes. The data come from the systematization of neologisms by using the informatic tool “BUSCANEO,” taken from electronic versions of the newspaper El Tiempo between 2007 and 2008. The methodology involves several stages: identification of neologisms and selection criteria for the thematic categorization, description of neologisms according to the basis of neological processes, and formation resources and correlation of the thematic data and neologisms. The results show that the highest occurrence of neological formation resources is prefixation and suffixation and the most prevalent new vocabulary related to the armed political conflict is refers to ideology and to the actors within the conflict.