The Language of CryptocurrenciesFrequent Words, Neologisms, Acronyms, and Metaphors

  1. Ricardo Casañ Pitarch 1
  1. 1 Universidad Politécnica de Valencia
    info

    Universidad Politécnica de Valencia

    Valencia, España

    ROR https://ror.org/01460j859

Journal:
Íkala

ISSN: 0123-3432

Year of publication: 2023

Volume: 28

Issue: 1

Pages: 122-138

Type: Article

DOI: 10.17533/UDEA.IKALA.V28N1A07 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

More publications in: Íkala

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies have been the latest technological revolution in the world of finances. Although this revolution has not been completed yet, and as a payment method is still limited, their popularity has vastly increased since 2020 due to speculation about their value. As in any other field, any revolution in economics, technology, education, or society implies another parallel language revolution. This is how the introduction of cryptocurrencies has led to the emergence of some new forms of language. This quantitative case study aims to analyze the characteristics of that crypto language and identify some of the most usual words, acronyms, metaphors, and other popular expressions within this field. To achieve this purpose, a glossary published by the company Bit2Me was used along with the Google search bar, which provided the number of appearances on the net. Results showed that some neologisms had been created, acronyms prevailed over some words and expressions, and the use of animal metaphors was a usual practice. These results contribute to the field of electronic finances by showing that the community of cryptocurrency users have created their own linguistic rules to communicate among them with the use of specific words, as detailed in this paper.

Bibliographic References

  • Algeo, J. (1977). Blends, a structural and systemic view. American Speech, 52(1), 47-64. https://doi.org/10.2307/454719
  • Aronoff, M. (1976). Word formation in generative grammar. Linguistic Inquiry Monographs Cambridge, Mass, 1(1), 1-134.
  • Bhatia, V. K. (1997). Applied genre analysis and esp. In T. Miller (Ed.), Functional approach to written text: Classroom applications, (pp. 134-149). Information Agency.
  • Bhatia, V.K. (2004). Worlds of written discourse: A genre-based view. Continuum International.
  • Cheng, W., & Ho, J. (2017). A corpus study of bank financial analyst reports semantic fields and metaphors. International Journal of Business Communication, 54(3), 258-282. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488415572790
  • Ciganović, B. (2019). A study of the cryptocurrency terminology in English and Croatian (Doctoral dissertation). Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek.
  • Crystal, D. (2001). Language and internet. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139164771
  • Dyer, A. W. (1989). Making semiotic sense of money as a medium of exchange. Journal of Economic Issues, 23(2), 503-510. https://doi.org/10.1080/00213624.1989.11504916
  • Furnham, A. (1984). Many sides of the coin: The psychology of money usage. Personality and individual differences, 5(5), 501-509. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(84)90025-4
  • Gaudio, P. (2012). Incorporation degrees of selected economics-related Anglicisms in Italian. The anglicization of European Lexis, 10, 305-324. https://doi.org/10.1075/z.174.20gau
  • Gibbs, R. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. Cambridge University Press.
  • Harley, H. (2006). English words: A linguistic introduction. Blackwell.
  • Janssen, M. (2005). Between inflection and derivation paradigmatic lexical functions in morphological databases. In J. D. Apresjan & L. L. Iomdin (Eds.), East-West encounter: Second International Conference on Meaning and Text Theory (pp. 187–196). Slavic Culture Languages.
  • Khan, M. (2013). Neologisms in Urdu: A linguistic investigation of Urdu media. Language in India, 13(6), 816-826.
  • Klebanow, S. (1991). Power, gender, and money. In S. Klebanow, and E. L. Lowenkopf (Eds.), Money and mind (pp. 51-59). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-3762-5_5
  • Krimpas, P. G. (2017). iso 704: 2009 and equivalents of English financial terms in lesser-used languages: The case of Greek. Perspectives, 25(3), 397-416. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2017.1287206
  • Lakoff, G, & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago University Press.
  • Laursen, A. L., & Mousten, B. (2015). Tracking anglicisms in domains by the corpus-linguistic method—A case study of financial language in stock blogs and stock analyses. In ieee International Professional Communication Conference, (pp. 1-7). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2015.7235806
  • Lipton, A. (2019). Toward a stable tokenized medium of exchange. In C. Brummer (Ed.), Cryptoassets. Legal, regulatory and monetary perspectives (pp. 89-115). Oxford. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190077310.003.0005
  • Mateo-Martinez, J. (2010). Professional and academic languages. In R. Giménez Moreno (Ed.), Words for working professional and academic English for international business and economics (pp. 17-56). Universitat de València.
  • Nădrag, L. (2020). How to teach English for economics. Case study: Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin vocabulary. Ovidius University Annals, 20(1), (Series Economic Sciences), 444-450.
  • Nakamoto, S. (2019). Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Manubot, 1-7. Retrieved on 31 May 2020 from https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
  • Peprnik, J., & Univerzita Palackého (2006). English lexicology. Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci.
  • Plag, I. (2003). Word-formation in English. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511841323
  • Rao, X. N. (2008). A study on business text translation from the perspective of translation aesthetics. Wuhan University.
  • Ratih, E., and Gusdian, R. (2018). Word formation processes in English new words of Oxford English Dictionary (OED) online. Celtic: A Journal of Culture, English Language Teaching, Literature and Linguistics, 5(2), 24-35. https://doi.org/10.22219/celtic.v5i2.7617
  • Sánchez-Pérez, M., & Cortés-de-los-Ríos, M. E. (2015). The financial language used to communicate the same socio-economic events in English and Spanish press through metaphors and metonymies. ESP Today, 3(2), 216-237.
  • Silaški, N. (2011). Animal metaphors in some business-related terms in English. Radovi Filozofskog fakulteta u Istočnom Sarajevu, 13(1), 565-576.
  • Somit, A. (1948). Andrew Jackson as administrator. Public Administration Review, 8(3), 188-196.
  • Ten Hacken, P., & Thomas, C. (2013). The semantics of word formation and lexicalization. Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748689606.001.0001
  • Trask, R. L. (1999). Key concepts in language and linguistics. Psychology Press.
  • VanPatten, B. (2011). Stubborn syntax: How it resists explicit teaching and learning. In P. Leow and Sanz, C. (Eds.), Implicit and explicit language learning: Conditions, processing, and knowledge (pp. 9-21). Georgetown University.
  • Worster, D. (1993). The wealth of nature: Environmental history and the ecological imagination. Oxford University Press.
  • Wallace, N. (2010). Fiat money. In S. N. Durlauf & L. E. Blume (Eds.), Monetary Economics (pp. 66-75). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230280854_8
Data source: Dialnet