From Lexical Meaning to Speaker Stance: Pragmatic Recontextualisation of English Digital Neologisms

This study investigates the pragmatic potential of selected English digital expressions documented in recent Oxford and Cambridge lexicographic reports. Focusing on rage bait, brain rot, slop, delulu, parasocial, tradwife and skibidi, it distinguishes published lexical meaning from contextually inferred interactional acts such as accusation, self-irony, affiliation and evaluation. The article introduces a six-dimensional interpretive coding model incorporating lexical sense, target, stance, participation, shared knowledge and register. Examples constructed for analytical purposes illustrate contrasts without being represented as natural corpus data. The study argues that recent lexical visibility does not necessarily entail novel coinage and that dictionary inclusion does not remove pragmatic variation. A future corpus-based validation design is outlined.