American youth slang in Russian media

Abstract

The formation of the global media space contributes to the active penetration of a different, non-Russian, culture in the domestic media, with one or another broadcast lifestyle having a great impact on the behaviour of young people, shaping, among other things, their oral and written speech through slang. Slang is a rather actively developing lexical layer, new slang units appear in the language every day, they reflect not only cultural values, priorities and aspirations of those who use them, but also demonstrate specific ways of shaping thinking. The study of American slang words and their influence on contemporary Russian youth is especially relevant in the context of information warfare. The authors examine slang words that are reflected in the Russian-language media and social networks, as well as the peculiarities of their influence on the cultural values of adolescents. The materials with slang words, posted from January 2019 to February 2022 in social networks TikTok, VKontakte, on the youth Internet portals QRU, Spletnik, Elle Girl were selected by the method of continuous sampling. The authors reveal their meaning in the context of the analysed publications and come to the conclusion that the active use of such slang units as, for example, crash, cheater, flex, ROFL indicates the priority of idleness in the leisure time of young people. At the same time, teenagers show a lack of interest in cultural leisure: there are no slang expressions for such activities as going to a museum, sightseeing, theatre, concert hall or library.