Unconventional appellatives in metalinguistic comments (based on NALR)

Our paper approaches the terms that function as “common names appellatives” encountered in metalinguistic comments. Used allocutively or not, these unconventional appellatives (sometimes codified and accepted by at least a part of the community members) are situated at the border of the nicknames, to which they relate due to their affective content, but do not express individualization by capturing uniqueness, as they designate “a species” or a personal category, being close to “group names appellatives”. Belonging to an area of interference between proper and common nouns, they individualize within a general class and, at the same time, like irony and nickname, constitute one of the pragmatic mechanisms that the speaker uses to criticize or ridicule various aspects that do not conform to the norms and the specific patterns of the traditional mentality, either related to the human body or to behaviors. Like nicknames, these unconventional appellatives belong to the collective imaginary and are the expression of the speaker’s free linguistic creativity.