SHIFTS IN PUBLIC OPINIONS AND BELIEFS AS A FACTOR OF LEXICAL UNITS SEMANTIC AND AXIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Abstract

Usual transformations of the current lexis and its stock, semantics as well as treatments of its particular words reflect some shifts in social consciousness. They are provoked by changes in political, cultural, psychological spheres of social life. The author of this article aim at the analysis of the factors which facilitate such transformations of the lexical units semantic and axiological characteristics in modern discourse. Among the tasks is considered a differentiated description of the extralingual factors which influence the key words, elements of the active social and political lexis, functioning in specific time. Shifts in the meaning and evaluation of the lexical units constitute the object of the research. The subject matter of the paper covers a number of words denoting current and somehow sensitive areas of the social life, such as oligarchs and oligarchy. The researchers applied descriptive methods and lexicographic analysis as well as associative experiment techniques. At the brink of the centuries, last but not the least position in the process of these words semantics and evaluation transformation is taken by the struggle of opinions and beliefs. The latter is manifested in a relatively democratic information space, free and developed political discourse, active political campaigning, etc. Heavily influenced by extralingual factors as well as active processes of independent national state-building, the Ukrainian language has seen a new wave of lexical units and idioms semantics and evaluation transformation. The key role is given to the decommunisation factors as well as Ukrainian state ideology, its own political space, war with russia, etc. The linguistic description of these processes is in urgent need as never before.