Anthropole, Unithèque, Nespresso et autres mots composites dans l’espace universitaire et urbain de Lausanne

Our recent studies (Vorger 2011, 2012) have been centred on a double corpus of neologisms taken from slam lyrics and epitextual and peritextual writings connected to this movement. It was shown to be highly neologenic and that the morphological and what we termed the phraseological matrix were the most fruitful ones. This study focused on the code in which these neologisms were disseminated, the oral code for the lyrics and the written for the paratext. Continuing on from these analyses, the question of blends, or composite words as we term them, is raised in a different context: the vector of dissemination in this case being presumably the written code. The university and urban environments are characterised by signboards, though dissemination can take effect orally as well. The case of Lausanne is rich in lexical creativity, but what forms does it take, what are the main factors and functions of neology in this context and what becomes of these blends in the long run? The way these expressions are formed, what function they fulfil and what factors encourage them will be analysed from a corpus of examples taken from the university environment (Anthropole building, Uniscope paper, Unicard card, etc.) and the urban (“Empoubellisson notre ville”) and advertising contexts (Nespresso).