THE ECONOMY OF WORDS: A SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF EPIGRAMMATIC TED TALK TITLES

Abstract

The present thesis focuses on the semantic component of epigrammatic TED Talk titles and aims to raise the simple question, how is it possible that so much meaning can be conveyed using so little linguistic means? With a carefully selected corpus of forty TED Talk titles based on the talks that had accumulated the highest number of views, this study applies Qualitative Descriptive Analysis combined with Conceptual Metaphor Theory developed by Lakoff & Johnson in 1980. The result is a list of recurrent semantic strategies used in epigrammatic TED Talk titles, including structural, orientational, and ontological metaphors, thus providing evidence to the existence of what could be referred to as a “semantics of brevity”. On the whole, TED Talks have been proved to use their unique micro-genre to convey meaningful information and create expectations for the audience with regard to the message delivered. At the same time, the different forms in which titles appear—namely, noun phrase, imperative, interrogative, or declarative—rather than being grammatical peculiarities per se turn out to be ways of conveying metaphors. This research is an attempt to contribute to ongoing discussions concerning language economy in digital public communication.