The Language of Time Images: yolkfri, zauzhaizing, tiktoker, khaipozhor... (On “A Dictionary of 2017–2018 Changes”)

Abstract

The article analyzes “A Dictionary of 2017-2018 Changes” (2022), compiled by M. Vishnevetskaya, as a lexicographic phenomenon in line with historical, cultural, social and linguistic transformations in the colloquial speech of modern time. The originality of the concept of the publication, which is a dictionary-chronology of new phenomena that arose in 2017-2018 and entrenched in journalism, the Internet and speech practice of different segments of the population, is noted. It is stated that the borrowings, phraseological units, elements of socio-political and everyday jargon, meme expressions and syntactic idioms presented in the book are largely of an occasional nature. They became a reaction of society to force majeure situations and concrete actions and remarks of statesmen and media persons, creatively reinterpreted by journalists and correlated with historical realities. It is said about the expressiveness of the language models, the metaphoricity of its images and forms. It is pointed out that the methods of word usage in 2017-2018 differ from the standard neologisms of the late 1990s in symbolism, the effect of a cultural explosion and have not yet been fully entrenched in national use. They make up an increasingly increasing layer of uncodified elements of the Russian language, which pushes the traditional division into speech styles. The most striking and unusual examples of the “philology of the absurd” are commented on, reflecting the dynamics of modern communicative polylingualism. The variety of phonetic, grammatical, lexical and stylistic ways of creating spontaneous speech, the uniqueness of accompanying examples and connotations are emphasized. “A Dictionary” can serve as a source of replenishment of lexicographic neology. Its materials will be useful not only to specialists in culture of language, journalists and speechwriters, but also to codifiers of language changes. The article examines the issue of professional selection of neologisms by immersing them in the natural element of live speech and adapting them to traditional formulas of publicism and normative stylistics. The problem of analysis and classification of the substandard, which goes beyond the accepted schemes of consistency and tiering of linguistic phenomena, is posed. The conclusion is made about the need to study the active processes of the Russian language taking into account the constantly changing sociolinguistic situation.