Pragmaticalization Of Evaluative Words: A NSM Approach

Evaluative words are frequently used in the daily communication which shows personal judgment towards a person's behavior or attitude, an entity or a situation. Natural Semantic Metalanguage noted that every society has certain evaluative words that provide a frame of orientation in daily life and guide people's judgment and behavior. People define evaluative words in different ways. In this paper, evaluative words are defined as "typically characterize a person's behavior or attitude, an entity or a situation in terms of the speaker's subjective judgment and in a positive way". Since the number of evaluative words used in English is substantial, by conducting interviews and questionnaires with Americans, five evaluative words are shown to be the most typical ones. They are beautiful, wonderful, amazing, cool and fantastic.This paper attempts to use pragmaticalization to explain the meaning change of words. The process is that the original semantic or dictionary meaning may change when it is used in various contexts with new pragmatic meaning, and when it is widely accepted and used in public; it may have a new semantic meaning and finally be written into the dictionary. With the substantial data collected from the American shows and movies and the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach of semantic analysis, it proposes the semantic explications framed in each evaluative word. The implications and explications of each evaluative word also indicate the subtle differences among them in terms of their meanings. Moreover, according to the data in Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the process of pragmaticalization of each evaluative word with possible prediction for future development is also presented. At the same time, some possible historical and cultural factors that motivated the generation of new meanings are explored.