DESCRIPTION OF A PERSON USING OBSOLETE WORDS

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the way in which it is possible to describe a person and his/her behaviour using obsolete words, as they are very precise carriers of content and meaning, useful in defining a person in terms of physical and behavioural aspects. Different editions of the Zingarelli Dictionary taken in this analysis have proved to be a necessary means in the objective comparison of different terms observed in order to determine the reliability of collected content. The obtained results describing a person have been analysed qualitatively and quantitatively, assisted by the corpus of the two biggest national dailies, Corriere della sera and La Repubblica. The words we considered appropriate for this study have been selected from different works created mainly between 2010 and 2012 and corresponding to the Zingarelli Dictionary in which those obsolete words were found. The results obtained from the tables presented in this study regarding the aforementioned dailies are unfortunately insignificant in quantitative terms. On the other hand, a considerable quantity and quality of the presented terms is also a significant proof of the diversity of the words that we can use for the description of a person and his/her behaviour. These words have a capacity to express these characteristics efficiently, both in terms of the number of used terms and in terms of the precision which they carry and therefore, they have a wide array of possible applications in the world of mass communication.