ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the linguistic issues inherent in how the Leave and Remain campaigns were promoted in the UK’s 2016 referendum on whether Britain should remain a member of or leave the European Union. Specifically, it is argued that the linguistic creativity in the label ‘Brexit’ was beneficial to campaigners in favour of Britain leaving the EU. The chapter presents analyses of the morphological structure of the term ‘Brexit’, its competitor term ‘Bremain’ and the related terms coined to describe adherents of both the Leave and Remain positions. It then moves on to discuss usage of the term ‘Brexit’ particularly, taking a corpus-based approach to examining its function and ideological effects in context.
