Gladkova, Anna (2003). The semantics of nicknames of the American presidents. In Peter Collins, & Mengistu Amberber (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://www.als.asn.au/proceedings/als2002.html. PDF (open access)
This study is focused on the recorded public nicknames of the American presidents, which were collected from onomastic dictionaries, reference literature on American presidents, and the internet. The data consisted of approximately 430 nicknames for 43 presidents. It is shown that the semantic structure of nicknames can be explicated with lexical universals to make their meaning transparent and avoid a culture-biased analysis and that the semantic analysis of nicknames can give clues to cultural values and assumptions determining their coining.
The semantic structure of nicknames contains both referential and expressive components. The referential components of nicknames can be evaluative. The expressive components are complex and can include emotive components, as well as components of status and familiarity. Nicknames differ in their expressive value, and their variety depends on the forms of personal names used in nicknames. It is possible to divide the nicknames examined here into several groups according to the cultural assumptions underlying their coining.
Research carried out in consultation with or under the supervision of one or more experienced NSM practitioners
