Loan Words from English in Youth Slang 2020-2021: Evidence of Description and Analysis

Abstract

Abstraсt. The study is devoted to the identification of English loan words in the youth slang inherent in the generation of millennials - young people between the age of 14 and 35 who were born on the turn of the millennium. There are many scientific works studying the phenomenon of youth slang, defining its boundaries, functions, and describing criteria. The most topical ones focus on the youth slang of the 2010s. There are studies of the issue of the English borrowing and English influence in modern Russian. However, the impact of English on the slang of modern youth is still understudied. We presume that the rapid increase in borrowings in this area requires close attention and scientific analysis. Millennial slang is represented in numerous humorous Internet publications, but unlike the slang of the previous generation, it is not properly described. The purpose of our paper is to identify new English borrowings, to highlight their lexical and grammatical characteristics as compared to those of previous years. The relevance of this work is due to the attention to the slang of todays youth in the aspect of globalization processes. The study used methods of reviewing the works of linguists, the analysis of Internet publications and dictionary data, interviewing of informants, and diachronic comparison. As a result of the analysis of the collected material, an increase in the number of Anglicisms was shown in comparison with the 2010s, and some features of the formation of lexical meanings and grammaticalization of new lexical units were revealed. Youth slang is a reflection of modern social phenomena, and its study is of interest not only for linguists but also for culturologists, sociologists, and psychologists.