Vol. 63 No. 3 (2015)
Research Article

Nickname + -ing: A Perlocutionary Evaluation

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  • Michael Adams
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1179/0027773815Z.000000000118

Published 2015-09-01

Copyright (c) 2015 Maney Publishing

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Abstract

A character in a short story titled “The Referees,” by Joseph O’Neill, proposes the form of a term for any unwanted hypocoristic nicknaming, such as Mike for Michael, simply the nickname in question verbed and suffixed with -ing, so, in this example, Miking. The unwanted nickname reflects a speaker’s verdictive illocutionary meaning, but, as a perlocutionary response to the presumptuous nicknaming act, NICKNAME + -ing resists that meaning or its legitimacy. At least, it identifies the act, for which previously there was no handy term.

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References

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