English urban neological discourse: pragmasemantic aspect

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of semantic, cognitive and pragmatic features of English neologisms of the urban discourse to identify in their definitions and contextual field the mentality features of the creators of these neologisms. The relevance of the study is ensured by the continuous expansion of the corpus of English neologisms, the permanent interest of linguists in the English urban neological discourse, the need for scientific interpretation of the display of collective experience in the analyzed vocabulary. The material was the examples taken from English electronic sources from 2017 till 2023. The choice was determined by the fact that these resources provide informal vocabulary reflecting the characteristics of collective word creation. The fundamental method is lexicological analysis allowing one to consider the new network vocabulary of the English urban discourse from the perspective of its semantic and pragmatic potential. The study uses elements of the following types of analyses: discursive, interpretative, descriptive, component, structural, semantic, cognitive and stylistic. The urban discourse is understood as a set of cognitive and pragmatic characteristics contained in English neological units used to implement the entire spectrum of ideas about the modern city by the participants in this discourse. Neologisms are traditionally understood as the result of dynamic processes reflecting the adaptation of the language to the transformations in the society. The article notes that English urban neologisms have a cognitive and pragmatic potential, which is a consequence of the subjective evaluative worldview. Evaluation as a process of establishing the value relationship of a person to the analysed neologisms and as a result of this relationship is an integral part of the process of reflecting reality and has a cognitive nature.