Abstract
The article studies Anglo-Americanisms as part of modern German youth slang. The subcultural nature of the given vocabulary has been pointed out. The author analyses specialized dictionaries in order to find out the morphological and semantic specificity of Anglo-Americanisms. The influence of mass media and subcultural styles plays an important role for popularizing these lexical units. Advantages of using borrowed words are often determined by their formal unusualness and prestigious status of English language. Most roots of the given vocabulary are metaphorized. Young people use metaphors to express subjective judgment and ironic attitude. Combining German and English roots is peculiar for word-building. Such slangisms are examples of creativeness. Using Anglo-Americanisms, young people try to oppose slang to Standard German. Prefixation and suffixation are productive ways of forming new lexical units. Word-building processes in many cases come along with semantic changes. An insignificant part of borrowed vocabulary can be classified as abbreviations. Anglo-Americanisms in youth slang are morphologically and orthographically assimilated because of their subsystemic character compared to Standard German on the one hand and globalization of subcultural activities on the other. Thematic groups of borrowed vocabulary have been singled out. Most slangisms express evaluation of the surrounding reality, name persons, leisure activities, forbidden things. The use of Anglo-Americanisms in German youth slang is determined by the wish for self-identification, creativeness, contrasting, expressiveness, achieving status in appropriate subcultural surroundings.
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