Есть ли жизнь офлайн, или О проблемах номинации невиртуальной действительности

Abstract

The paper is devoted to analysis of the lexical units used in English and Russian for the purpose of nominating virtual and non-virtual reality. Special attention is paid to the study of ways to designate human life activity outside of computer-mediated technologies. It is proved that the presence of only one form of human life activity for many millennia did not cause a nominative need to assign a specific characteristic to a phenomenon that has no ontological alternative. The emergence of a technologized virtual environment has provoked the need to differentiate two forms of modern life and two chronological layers: the era before the Internet and after it’s invention. As a result, the adjective online, which characterizes the secondary form of existence, was used as a relative onomasiological base for naming genetically and chronologically primary forms of being. The initial technological dichotomy online / offline has undergone semantic widening, acquiring the status of a global ontological dichotomy online-life / offline-life. In the recent period of time, a number of synonymous units have appeared in English and Russian, denoting virtual and real forms of life activity. In addition to borrowings and calques translated from English, Russian widely uses its own language tools and original nominative techniques, among which the processes of neosemantization and univerbalization are most productive.