By Alexandra Bagasheva, Professor of Linguistics, University of Sofia, Bulgaria

These reflections are on the construal behind and possible overlap between the terms ‘winged words’ (including ‘winged phrases’), ‘catchwords’ (including ‘catchphrases’), and ‘precedent lexemes’ (under which both words and phraseological units are subsumed). The first and last are familiar in Bulgarian and Russian. The central question is: Is it possible that the type of construal we impose by the terms of our analyses actually makes us look at different things? More challengingly, can we assume that ‘winged words’ share a referent with the English ‘catchwords’? Does either or do both relate easily or conspicuously to yet another more generic term ‘precedent lexemes’?

The terms discussed seem to have, if not an identical, at least an overlapping referent in the world. Both the overlaps and contrasts, as well as the framing ensuing from the inherent construal (which can be inferred from the conceptual metaphors and schemata employed in the labeling), may be suggestive of the different ways of being of the shared referent in two different discourses – Bulgarian and English.

The common property shared by all three terms is that they try to pry away from the ‘conduit metaphor’ by evoking different experiential scenarios for grounding the conceptualizations of words and phrases. We have different notions of the essence and function of words and the way we talk about them reveals these underying notions. Reddy’s (1979) metaphor of language functioning as a conduit for transferring thoughts from one individual to another, where words act as containers conveying thoughts and feelings, is assumed to rest on the following interrelated conceptual metaphors:

• Ideas/methods are objects
• Linguistic expressions are containers
• Communication is sending (Lakoff and Johnson 1980)

The three terms ‘winged words’, ‘catchwords’, and ‘precedent lexemes’ – evoke different associative interpretations and are respectively based on different metaphors. The common denominator is the emancipation of words/phrases as something a lot more elusive and elaborate than containers. ‘Catchwords’ endows words with power – they are either catchers or catchees (i.e., sought after); ‘winged words’ bestows freedom and independence to words; while ‘precedent lexemes’ anchors them as labels of events with all their parameters. Alluding to the most commonplace and common sense (i.e., experientially, not analytically, grounded) associations that these evoke, these terms appear to simultaneously reflect and shape public sensitivity to different phenomena (i.e. they do not have the same referent, despite certain overlaps in some of the properties of the phenomena they index).

‘Winged words’ can be immediately associated with the claim that ‘(w)ord meanings cannot be pinned down as if they were dead insects. Instead they flutter around elusively like butterflies’ (Aitchison 1994: 39-40). This may come as a contradiction to the folk belief that words hurt more than physical wounds (according to the Bulgarian folk tale An Evil Word is Never Forgotten), or that ‘a word spoken is a stone thrown’ (a Bulgarian proverb). Meanwhile, in Bulgarian there exist words with ‘powerful wings’ (Dobreva 2012: 367). These are special ‘winged words’. Something in their nature marks them as different from other words. A series of questions naturally arises: What is the medium ‘winged words’ fly through? Why are certain words qualified as ‘winged’? What special properties do they possesses or is there a common wordness property that they possess in excess? Does something/someone imbue this potential for flying in them? According to Dobreva (2012: 368) these are words or phrases created by someone on some occasion, after which they are given wings with which they engage in an intertextual flight far beyond their original context and spatial location.

The term ‘winged word’ is supposed to correspond to the notion of ‘catchword’. The latter implicates interactivity, since in the conceptualization of ‘catching’ (despite or because of its metaphoric utilization) a causal chain of an agent and a recipient is preserved in the metaphoric domain mapping and the interactivity between human mind and word is preserved. In the former, ‘winged word’, the ephemeral independent ontology of words is showcased. The directionality in the catching process is equivocal -- i.e., a perceiver catches a word or a word catches a perceiver -- but whichever way this goes the significant point is that interactivity is involved.  

‘Precedent lexis’ is another label aimed at capturing almost the same phenomenon. Yuri Karaulov (1987 [2010]) introduced the term in the Russian analytical tradition and used it to encompass various types of precedent phenomena: names, texts, utterances. The label implies a significant happening (involving text production/use) which stands out as an anchoring moment. Indexicality in the Piercian sense appears to motivate the choice of the term. Text fragments, names and event mentions all function indexically. ‘Precedent lexis’ (Dyadechko 2008, Kuzmova 2021) as a term resonates with a temporal and event specification. It presupposes that the meaning of the word’s umbilic cord connection with a specific event at a particular time and a specific instance of communicative co-semiosis does not easily fade or become overlaid. No matter what path a precedent lexeme traverses via various contexts, it will invariably carry with it the sense of its initial specific usage.

‘Winged words’, ‘catchwords’, ‘precedent lexeme’ are all terms that try to fix words and phrases capable of dispersals and adaptations through contexts, registers, and speakers. Being named thus is a way of fixing them. Such words and phrases move unsystematically and discontinuously and crystallize diverse phenomena into a unity of experience.

Although naming does not affect the words and phrases themselves (e.g., new normal, see Gupta 2020), the name affects the perception of their essence. It is via an all-purpose cognitive mechanism that we choose to call certain words and phrases in Bulgarian ‘winged words’, ‘catchwords’ in English, and ‘precedent lexis’ in both Russian and Bulgarian. According to the postulates of conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), it is not language but human thinking that is metaphoric. This metaphoricity is invariably accompanied by metonymy as a reasoning mechanism (Barcelona 2003, 2011, 2015). Metaphoric thinking can find expression via various signalling systems, diverse modalities, and multimodal products. Language, as the ubiquitous and most easily available signalling system, is inherently ‘metaphtonymic’ (Goossens 2003). Careful analysis of metaphoric and metonymic chains can reveal deeply hidden perceptions, conceptualizations, and sensibilities underlying cultural segmentations, since metaphor is ‘a cross-domain mapping in the conceptual system’ (Lakoff 1993).

Thus, the term ‘winged words’ in Bulgarian highlights the epiphenomenal, resonating revocation of words and phrases in various contexts. Revocation significantly enriches these words and phrases so that they become augmented. An imperceptible network comes together in such words that is both subservient and resistant to the creativity that is ascribed wings. The wings of such words remain resting until someone picks them again because of their memorability or the contested concepts they evoke and tries to pin it into a new frame. Such words fly through minds, texts, media, spaces, and times when stirred to life by a picker and create a discursive hypertext which defies all types of boundaries.

For example, the ‘winged phrase’ ловя снежинки във въздуха [lovya snezhinki vav vazduha, catch snowflakes in the air) had a marked media presence and is still used (with declining frequency) to indicate ‘doing even the impossible to prevent adverse events and disapproval’ (Dobreva 2012: 36-369). On 10 December 2010 after serious complaints from Sofia citizens about accumulated snow in the streets, the then Prime Minister Boyko Borisov ordered that the responsible authorities should,

Wait as of today ready with spades and snow blowers and snow throwers so that even when a single snowflake falls, you will catch in the air ()

Borisov’s ‘winged words’ took flight through the mediascape and popular discourse. In doing so, they were divorced from their context and the snowflake came to represent any societal problem.

‘Winged words’ differ from ‘precedent lexemes’ because the latter term is concerned with perpetuating historicity and temporal linkage. Since a precedent quotient persists, such lexemes function as normative junctures opening new interpretative possibilities but always remain anchored to a specific initiation moment. The precedent quotient has identifiable properties and frames that are infinitely extensible (e.g., те плеснаха с ръце и се прегърнаха [te plesnaha s râtse i se pregârnaha, they clapped their hands and embraced each other] as a typical representative of a ‘precedent lexeme’). Kuzmova 2021 (96-99) identifies the point of origin of те плеснаха с ръце и се прегърнаха [te plesnaha s râtse i se pregârnaha, they clapped their hands and embraced each other] as a line in the poem Hadzhi Dimiter by Hristo Botev, a 19^th-century Bulgarian revolutionary and poet. The contemporary use of the phrase has lost its initial positive meaning and appears now to denote ‘a surprising, illogical (re)union’, with basically ironic or sardonic connotations. This piece of precedent lexis seems to have moved so far away from its point of origin as to have changed its evaluative charge. It may be speculated that its precedent nature has been obscured and that it has acquired properties that bring it closer to a ‘winged phrase’. Such developments feed the illusionary assumption that the terms are synonymous, but they punctuate the phenomena they name in different ways are not co-extensive, even though there are overlaps.

Both ‘winged words’ and ‘precedent lexemes’ achieve their effect through the co-articulation of the familiar and the novel, the established and the contested -- by having an already negotiated value and a still-to-be-evaluated thrust in public communications. Precedent words and phrases are always marked with special value within a community and are characterized with semantic overload (Kuzmova 2021: 95). Besides, they are always authored, or at least it is possible to trace back their origin in relation to a precedent phenomenon (ibid.) and in that sense always indexical and associable with a worldview.

‘Winged words’ and ‘precedent lexemes’ are similar to one another but are distinct from ‘catchwords’, even though they are used as the closest translation equivalents in Bulgarian. ‘Catchwords’ grab the attention of users, and speakers catch them as opportune nodes in public discourse. They punctuate communicative networks and accrue added value, both exponentially adding new features with every instance of usage and subversively evoking contradictory receptions in public communications (see Gupta 2020).

In an attempt to illustrate how these differ from one another, I use the classificatory schema offered by Philip Seargeant (2024). The quoted examples are those mentioned above.

References

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Seargeant, Philip (2024) https://fass.open.ac.uk/research/projects/analysing-political-catchwords...

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