Emotioncy Analysis of Some Persian Neologisms Approved by Academy of Persian Language and Literature

To date, some research has been carried out on Persian neologisms from linguistics, linguistic typology or sociolinguistics perspectives; however, research from a psycholinguistic perspective offers new insights into Persian neologisms and their foreign equivalents. Employing the concept of emotioncy (emotioncy+frequency of senses), the present study compares the cultural weight of seven Persian neologisms and their foreign equivalents to discover why the public accept or reject the words, approved by the academy of Persian language and literature. Moreover, the study examines the role of their native language in the application of these words. To this end, 223 participants in the quantitative phase and 61 participants in the qualitative phase of the study were selected from the public based on convenience sampling and data saturation to participate in the study. The study follows a sequential mixed-methods design which consists of qualitative and quantitively phases to collect the relevant data. The results of the t-test show that there is a significant difference between the six pairs in terms of emotioncy. Moreover, the results of One-way ANOVA confirm that there is a significant difference in three of the selected words with respect to the native language of the speakers, including Persian, Kurdish and Turkish in terms of emotioncy. After determining the inter-rater agreement and inter-rater reliability of the data, the qualitative results reveal 16 reasons for the acceptance of the foreign equivalents, such as positive association, beautiful-sounding words and high frequency. Also, eight reasons for the non-acceptance of the Persian neologisms are identified like negative association, hard sounding words and low frequency. Indeed, to promote the acceptance and application of neologisms, the academy of Persian language and literature should take not only linguistic but also psycho-sociolinguistics issues into consideration.