Word Creation Styles in Fantasy Novels

Abstract

This article presents a study of word creation styles in fantasy novels focusing on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and The BFG. Since these two children novels are well known all over the world, it is interesting to study Rowling and Dahl’s word creation styles. To investigate their word creation styles, Robertson (1954), Bauer (1983), Yule (2000), Plag (2003), Stockwell and Minkova (2001), and O’ Grady, Archibald, Aronoff and Miller (2005)’s theoretical frameworks are employed. Then, their styles are compared and contrasted. The results reveal that compounding is the main lexical creation in both novels. Both Rowling and Dahl create their own suffixes to use in their books. Although diminutives and blending in both books are similar in their structure, Dahl’s Blending is more fanciful. Additionally, Rowling borrows some words from other countries, whereas Dahl does not borrow any foreign words in The BFG. Rowling uses shifted meaning technique as a type of the wordplay while Dahl uses lexical based-play technique. Moreover, reduplication is found only in Dahl’s novel.