„NESTALI SU NEOLOGIZAM, ARGENTINSKA IZMIŠLJOTINA”: OKAZIONALIZMI I NEOLOGIZMI ─ OŽILJCI DRUŠTVENIH PREVIRANJA

Abstract

Language changes under the influence of cultural, social, and political transformations; the words that are used or omitted reveal the internal structure of a given era and offer a view of the world around us from a cultural and ideological perspective. In this article, on the one hand, we present several neolo- gisms coined by the Argentinian comic book author Héctor Germán Oesterheld – products of his inclination toward the science fiction genre, his reflection on the challenges of global technological progress, and his figurative representation of the repressive structures of the Argentinian society of his time. On the other hand, beyond the realm of fiction, the author of new words Oesterheld lived through the rise and disintegration of Peronism and the years of Argentina’s brutal dictatorship, a period that also left its mark on the lexicon, giving rise to neologisms related to everyday political and social life. Both semantic and formal neologisms were gathered from two editions of the comic El Eternauta and from the biography Los Oesterheld by Fernanda Nicolini and Alicia Beltrami. We examine these neologisms within the context of their emergence and their sociolinguistic function. Through them, one can clearly perceive how social crises and wounds are translated into language, giving it expressions that did not previously exist. In Argentina, El Eternauta has had its own “reading” in every era; it has become an icon, like its author, and el eternauta (the eternal wanderer) has in each period had his own social incarnation.