The rise number of blends in modern English is somewhat determined by people‟s awareness of the phenomena of blending. Unlike in the past in which
blends were neglected, blends are now regarded as funny, creative, and trendy words. Furthermore, they are used to gain people‟s attention in advertisements and
media. Since many people are aware of blends, they realize that to make a blend they need to combine two or more words and shorten part of them. People start to
make blends and throw them into public. Moreover, social media play an essential role to popularize blends to the world.
h. The Distribution of Blends in Modern English in Terms of Domains
The following Figure 2.1 illustrates the distribution of blends categorized in ten domains in the rise of modern English. These ten domains are geography and
ecology; hybrid; media; medical; organizations, companies, and brand names; politic and economy; arts and popular culture; science; technology; and
transportation. Examining the figure, it can be inferred that the most popular domains are media, popular culture, and technology, which are represented by
399, 360, and 144 blends respectively. On the contrary, blends which are derived from the name of organizations, companies, and brand names and things related to
transportation are the least popular. The distribution of blends based on domains can be seen in Appendix 1.
Figure 2.1
The distribution of Blends in Terms of Domains
The most popular domain consists of blends which appear in media. It is due to the fact that the roles of media such as mass media and social media are
exceptionally massive these years. Furthermore, newspapers, magazines, journals, and articles which can be read through smartphones or computer tablet via online
are considered as a more practical and easier way in order to gain recent updates of what happening currently. Besides, the popularity social-networking platforms
such as facebook, twitter, path, etc supported by smartphones attract the users to communicate intensively with other people via smartphones. Consequently, many
words or terms are created through this way of communicating, creating the specific discourse of social media. This contributes a huge number of word
manufacturing, especially in the formation of blends. It is said that blends found in mass media such as news, magazine,
television, and radio are enormous. These five examples are the appearance of blends in the mass media domain. First, blend of balloon and fanatics was found
in the headline of online news taken from ABCNews.com. The headline said “Balloonatics Prepare for Thanksgiving Parade”. This blend was used to refer to
109 25
399
32 12
52 360
48 144
17 50
100 150
200 250
300 350
400
fans of the big balloons seen floating in the sky during Thanksgiving. Second, the blend Carmageddon car x Armageddon appeared on the Dallas News on
October 28, 2013. It said, When Los Angeles temporarily shut down I-405 in 2011 and 2012, warnings of Carmageddon proved inaccurate. Carmageddon
literally meant the battle of car, yet it was used to refer to a heavy traffic. Third, there was a blend of flexible and vegetarian flexitarian on the online news
http:www.thedailybeast.comnewsweek20080928part-time-vegetarians.html which said, “Advocates call it flexitarianism, but critics say being a little bit
vegetarian is like being a little bit pregnant”. Flexitarian meant a vegetarian who is flexible to combine meat to hisher meal. Fourth, a fictionalized TV docudrama
about Chinese artillery soldiers found on http:news.yahoo.comdigging-china- nuclear-tunnels-013008319.html. In that news, docudrama was created from
the blend of documentary and drama. Fifth, brogards brother x regards was found in a satirical article posted on November 14, 2013 on
http:www.policymic.comarticles73429snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegel-s-3-billion- rejection-letter-to-facebook-s-mark-zuckerberg. This blend was used in place of
regards as a complementary close to a letter. Besides, blends were also found in many advertisements. These five
examples describe the appearance of blends in this domain. First, a cosmetic product Macco created a tagline of its pro
duct “Macco, the cosmolission specialists” on October 2004. It used blend cosmolission which is originally
derived from two words cosmetic and collision. Second, it was also found as a feature of Burger King commercial with the tagline “Try eating our new
Croissandwich ” The blend combined croissant and sandwich to make a blend
