Формирование политических эвфемизмов: этапы, способы, динамика

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the study of political euphemisms. The aim of the research is to identify and substantiate the dynamic characteristics of political euphemisms used in Russian-language newspaper texts. The use of political euphemisms depends on the political reality and on the intention of communication: what appears to be a relevant political euphemism in this historical era, may be regarded as an obsolete euphemism in another era that requires a new euphemistic replacement. As the denotations of euphemisation change, a variety of linguistic means emerge. The paper describes the productive ways of formation of political euphemisms used in mass media texts of different historical periods (namely, under President Boris Yeltsin and President Vladimir Putin). The research is novel in that it is the first to present the tendencies of changes in the composition of political euphemisms from a diachronic perspective. As a result, it has been shown that as the language develops, semantic calquing occurs, the change of connotation strongly influences the ways of formation of new groups of euphemistic substitutes. Active processes at the lexical level of the language system contribute to the fact that some of the lexemes acquire the status of euphemisms. The main strategies for forming political euphemisms are prefixation, borrowing and metaphorisation.