Épopée d’un son, petite variation « Un buzz qui fait du buzz »

Onomatopoeia of a humming noise, borrowed from English and alluding to the semantic variation around the word business, the word buzz gives rise to debates about its origin. The term (pronounced boez), very popular on the internet and in the press, refers primarily to a rumour, a story that is spreading but it tends to designate, in more recent usages, the consequence of this process, namely the emergence of “raw” elements widely disseminated. It combines with multiple predicates: faire le buzz, créer le buzz, flatter le buzz, démonter le buzz, alimenter/nourrir le buzz, (re-)lancer le buzz…
This study aims to describe, through the observation of a French journalistic corpus (1995-2011), the emergence of the neologism buzz and its rapid integration into the French language. Arguing that the lexicon is not a pre-established reserve for a language, our analysis suggests the dynamism prevailing in the use and integration of a new lexical expression, without neglecting the necessary interaction / interference between sound and writing, in the case of the word buzz.