SOCIO-POLITICAL NEOLOGISMS OF THE XXI CENTURY: FEATURES OF CREATION AND FUNCTIONING

Abstract

From the point of view of the theory of neology, the processes of the formation of new words, the causes and prerequisites for their occurrence have not yet been studied in linguistics, in the end there is still no balanced clear definition of neologism. The very fact of registration of new words by lexicographers who are at the same time native speakers means that these words have passed the stages of entry and partial or complete assimilation in the language, namely: acceptualization and lexicalization in speech and language. On the slope of the last century, dynamic socio-political processes took place both in the international arena and within English-speaking countries. They continue today, certainly reflecting in the lexico-semantic system of the new socio-political vocabulary. This is evidenced by the emergence of a significant number of new words, syntagms, phrases, as well as lexicalized syntactic constructions, semantic derivation. Coverage of these issues and the transience of socio-political phenomena determine the relevance of the study of new words of socio-political content. This will contribute to a deeper knowledge of the multifaceted relations between language and society, an adequate perception of the structure and meaning of new words to achieve the most important goal of communication – mutual understanding. This research is an attempt to explore the creation of socio-political neologisms to determine the main productive word-building models, methods of their use and translation in the context of socio-political newspaper texts of the 21st century. The purpose of the study is to establish and analyze the ways of creating, functioning and translating neologisms in the English language journalistic discourse. The object of research are neologisms, the ways of their creation and functioning, and the subject is the ways of adequate translation of neologisms. Neologisms are words and phrases that mean a new concept or a new meaning for an already existing word. Taking into account the method of creation, neologisms are divided into: phonological neologisms; borrowings; semantic neologisms and morphological neologisms. The examples of socio-political neologisms analyzed in the research reflect the trends in the development of the word-forming system of the English language at the present stage. Their analysis allows us to conclude that at the present stage such types of coining new words as affixation (prefixation), reduction (abbreviations and shortenings), composition, blending, conversion are the most productive. Prefixation as a word-forming device is widely used in the English language due to the lack of endings as such. The levelling of case endings and the simplification of verb inflections led to deep lexical distinctions motivated by the use of prefixes. Prefixing is quite a powerful way of innovation, but it is inferior to reduction (abbreviations and acronyms) in frequency of use. A relatively new way of word formation – reduction, has reached a high degree of productivity due to the fact that the current media are trying to provide maximum information in the most compressed form to save time and space. The composite method of word-formation or word-composition occupies a significant place in the formation of English neologisms, its result is lexemes with diverse word-formation, structural and semantic characteristics, which in turn can serve as a derivational base for the creation of new composites. Currently, there is a tendency to increase compositional semantic structures in the English language. Blending is one of the most popular means of word formation in the English language. The bulk of modern research covers such areas as the field of information technology and advertising, because it is in these areas that the largest number of telescopic neoplasms are formed. Quite productive and common is the use of conversion in socio-political life. Conversion is referred to as an affixless way of word-building or even affixleless derivation. It consists in making a new word from some existing word by changing the category of part of speech, the morphemic shape of the original word remaining unchanged. Thus, the most productive models of the creation of neologisms are affixation, reduction, word composition, blending, conversion. The non-productive ways of modern English word formation include sound inheritance and repetition or reduplication. The study of the dynamics of the development of vocabulary was and is an important problem of linguistic science. This scientific exploration is an attempt to explore the ways of creating neologisms in the socio-political discourse presented in the language of the modern press; identify their main productive word-forming models, methods and forms of functioning in the context of socio-political newspaper texts of the XXI century. The research also establishes possible ways of translating neologisms into the Ukrainian language.