THE EFFECTS OF PHONETICS AND CELEBRITY INFLUENCE ON THE PREFERENCE AND MEMORABILITY OF NEOLOGISMS

Abstract

New words and phrases are invented all the time, but only some of them catch on. Why? Past research has identified several factors that may contribute to the popularity of new words, or neologisms, such as phonetics, emotionality, and the social identity of their users. However, these factors have typically only been researched in isolation. The present study was designed with the goal of assessing several factors in tandem. We presented 100 participants with a series of neologisms either within the tweet of a celebrity or within the tweet of a low follower count stranger. The words themselves were divided between words with "good" and "bad" phonetics as described in previous research (Pogacar et al., 2015). Participants rated how much they liked each word and their emotional attitude towards each word. After a brief distractor task, they were asked to freely recall as many words as possible and then completed a cued recall task where they were shown all of the words and asked to write down their definitions. We hypothesized that words that were presented by a celebrity and had phonetic patterns that have been shown to be preferable would have superior likability, emotionality, and memorability. We found partial support for these hypotheses: words with good phonetics were rated more likable and evoked a more positive emotional response, but words that were presented by celebrities had decreased likeability when compared to words presented by strangers. Memory scores were low across the board and were not significantly associated with our independent variables. These findings have implications for marketers and others who frequently coin neologisms.