BARBENHEIMER OR OPPENBARBIE: A CASE STUDY IN LEXICAL CREATIVITY AND LUDICITY IN ENGLISH

Abstract

Language creativity is a complex topic involving many different and mutually intertwined
aspects. In this paper we deal with lexical creativity in English and discuss several key
issues relevant to it: the relationship between productivity and creativity, the concepts of ludicity
and wordplay, the attention-seeking function of lexical creativity, and the importance of extralinguistic
factors in lexical creativity. To illustrate how these issues pertaining to lexical creativity
are reflected in the actual process of forming creative coinages, we focus specifically on the attention-
grabbing and the naming functions of lexical blending as one of the most creative and
most playful word formation processes in English, using as an example the blend Barbenheimer,
recently coined for a particular purpose of a double feature of the two different films premiering
on the same date. We discuss the formal structure of this blend, its semantic features, as well as
its iconicity and the degree of predictability exhibited in the way the names of two blockbusters
were amalgamated to form a blend.