From the atelier to e-commerce: A cognitive approach to neologisms in Spanish fashion

Although fashion is a topic of chief relevance in our society, its linguistic characteristics have attracted little attention among researchers. Facing the challenge of combining two different, but arguably complementary, perspectives — the Frame-Based Terminology model and Relevance Theory —, this paper focuses on English and French neologisms in the language of fashion. The data, extracted from top quality Spanish women’s fashion magazines, have been examined as signals of specialised language. The analysis shows that the correct interpretation of the terms rests on a specific set of relations and roles, but also on their lexical expansion, which satisfies the expectations of expert readers and general public.