Abstract
International audience A diachronic corpus of wide-circulation French journalistic discourse was used as the basis for the study of terms relating to social media/networks as well as terms derived from the names of social media/networks. It is revealed that while most social media/networks have little, if any, specialised vocabulary, Twitter, is notable in the abundance of its related vocabulary in French. Analysing the French terms used for six key notions relating to this social media shows that while the influence of English is undoubtedly important, and that some French equivalents to English borrowings do circulate, the bulk of terms used – both types and tokens – are borrowings. However, one case is described where a French term, non-existent in English has become more widely used than its borrowed equivalent. Some cases of neological creativity relating to Twitter are also detailed, further demonstrating the implantation and circulation of the fundamental concepts related to this particular social media.