Adaptation of Film Terminology in the General Language

Abstract

The paper deals with modern aspects of terminology in film industry. The paper aims at the study of the linguistic and extralinguistic levels of film terminology in the professional dialect of filmmakers and general strata of the language. The broader context of the film discourse viewed as a complex communicative issue requires simplified understanding among professionals, as well as during interaction between filmmakers and cinephiles. The author believes that there are two sources of film neologisms, connected with the appearance of new artifacts and adaptation of cinema terms in the interpretative discourse. The method of continuous sampling from modern cinema magazines provided a copious terminological material, which was afterwards studied by means of stylistic, word-building, and axiological analysis. The material demonstrated that modern film industry uses several ways of terminologisation, thus diminishing the distance to the general spoken language. They include simplification, abbreviation, imagery, string terms, holophrasis, blending, and rhymed terminological units. The new means of terminological innovation revealed a trend to conserve the term’s meaning while rendering the term with the additional meaningful or image element, which would facilitate its comprehension in intense communication. The means of terminological innovation were aimed at increasing simplicity, aesthetism, beautification, and irony, as well as invigorating dead imagery, expressing a new concept, and creating euphemisation. The determinologisation of the semantic sphere of cinema was supported by multiple examples and revealed great public and scientific interest to this sphere, indicating continuous productive innovational processes in cinema terminology.