Representation of Socio-Political Transformation in the Contemporary Vocabulary of Japanese

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of some social aspects of the socio-political changes impact in Japan in 2010-2020 and their contribution to the emergence of neologisms in the Japanese language. The active invasion of the English language into the vocabulary of the Japanese language is associated with social processes in Japan caused by its defeat in World War II, the period of American occupation, as well as the aggressive international policy of the 45th President of the United States Donald Trump. The aim of the work is to show the connection between the social processes in Japan and their international reflection under the pressure of US policy, and the appearance of neologisms of foreign origin in the Japanese language. Materials and methods of research: a method of structural-semantic modeling based on a detailed comparison of Japanese vocabulary. We also used a comparative method of studying socio-political processes. A sociological method was used to select the most common neologisms of foreign origin. Results of the work: we studied the neologisms of foreign origin that appeared in the last decade and have become quite densely included in the vocabulary of the Japanese language under the pressure of the countrys socio-political discourse against the background of US international policy, and, in particular, the aggressive political course of the 45th President of the United States Donald Trump in relation to Japan. In total, about 100 such neologisms were selected. We identified the most common neologisms of foreign origin through a sociological survey and studied in detail the history of the emergence of ten of them. These are lexical units that can be characterized not only as neologisms of exclusively foreign origin, but also as words of a mixed type, which are a combination of kango, words formed from roots of Chinese origin, and borrowings, as well as abbreviations of both types of new words. The work reflects the relationship between social processes in the country against the background of the international Japanese-American confrontation and the emergence of neologisms that entered the Japanese language.