Word Formation Strategies and Semantic Relations in Football Discourse

This paper explores the word formation processes and semantic relations in football discourse. It aims to investigate the type of word formation and semantic relations of words that are associated with the written football discourse. Knowledge of word formation with semantic relations of words is very relevant in enriching or expanding vocabulary power in English. It facilitates the learning of English words and aids effective communication. Application of word formation knowledge can solve the problem of inadequate or limited vocabulary power among the learners and users of English language in a second language situation. English as Second Language (ESL) learners cannot acquire vocabulary and affixes knowledge in the classroom alone, adequate attention need to be paid to using materials from the media, that is both print and electronic media. This will assist in improving their vocabulary development. There are different types of word formation strategies in English namely: blending, clipping, back formation, coinage, reduplicatives, borrowing, compounding, acronyms and abbronyms. At the lexico-semantic level, we have synonyms, antonyms and lexical repetition. Keywords: word formation, vocabulary, media, affixation, abbronyms, synonyms, discourse DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/9-8-07 Publication date: April 30th 201