Language change is wicked: semantic and social meaning of a polysemous adjective

Abstract

As a result of an ameliorative shift-to-opposite, the polysemous adjective wicked is an auto-antonym, having two senses opposite in meaning, that is, ‘evil’ and ‘good’. We discuss two studies which explore the social life of this word, with the first focusing on its production and the second on its perception. In the first study, conducted in Cornwall, United Kingdom, we find that young men are most advanced in the use of wicked ‘good’ while young women appear not to contribute to the incrementation, that is, the advancement, of this change. In the second study, conducted online across England, we find wicked ‘good’, relative to its synonym good, to be perceived as less young and to be evaluated positively across disparate characteristics relating to status and solidarity, particularly by older men. We find wicked ‘evil’, in contrast to its synonym evil, to be evaluated higher in status-type characteristics. This newly uncovered indexical field of wicked presents a possible explanation for the observed changes in production, contributing to ongoing questions about the role of social meaning in driving the incrementation of change. More generally, this article adds to the growing yet limited literature which explores semantic variation through the lens of variationist sociolinguistics.