Of “siliconaires” and “millionerds” – How ESP learners understand novel blends in English

In this paper we deal with some novel blends in English and discuss, from a cognitivist point of view, the ways they are formed and processed, particularly focusing on the interpretation of their meaning and the degree of recognisability of the source words in these blends by the ESP students of the Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade, as well as the difficulties they face in understanding them. We point out various reasons why these blends tend to be misinterpreted by non-native speakers of English and discuss the extent to which ESP teachers may rely on the tenets of Conceptual Blending Theory in the process of economic vocabulary acquisition and learning in an ESP economics course at the tertiary level.