The purpose of this study is to promote the development of French linguistic and cultural competence through the use of neologisms. This is because neologisms which reflect a new and diverse social culture formed at a specific time (Rets, 2014) are considered an effective means to cultivate linguistic and cultural competence, as they are based on an understanding of the recent linguistic and cultural phenomena of the target language. To this end, this study specifically investigates and lists the new words that appeared in four representative French daily newspapers, namely, ‘Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, 20 Minutes,’ over the course of around a year, from October 2019 to September 2020. This is because the new words appearing in the “daily newspapers,” which are related to the daily life of a social community and deal with content rich in the current affairs of the every day, hold rich elements of language and culture that are used and observed on a daily basis within the target language country. For this, first, the concept and type of new words were established in order to recognize new words. Next, in order to select the new words that should be first taught and learned, among all of the new words surveyed in the four daily newspapers, three criteria for selecting new words, 'frequency, implication, new words that have not yet been listed in the dictionary', were prepared, and we selected new words that met these three criteria. Finally, the selected new words are listed in order by highest frequency, according to their appearance in daily newspapers and in the new word list, basic information such as the new word, the type and meaning of the new word, and the source of the new word (newspaper, date), as well as a part of the original article using the new word or examples of usage which were presented for educational use and the enhancement of the new word list’s usefulness.

Neologism, French linguistic and cultural competence, Daily newspapers, Frequency, Linguistic criteria