What Angela Merkel Should Be Called: Neologisms of German Political Discourse in the Media of Other Countries

Abstract

This paper explores features of the new lexical and phraseological units of German political discourse and their function in other languages. German media discourse, reflecting the policy of one of the major European states, generates many new lexemes and idioms. An important component of the neologisms is vocabulary based on politicians’ names. Deonyms are widespread in all European languages; however, their formation and function have certain differences, both morphological and semantic. The article studies the peculiarities of such new words as merkeln and Merkelism in the political discourse in different languages. While the German language is characterised by the use of verb deonyms, they are not characteristic of Slavic languages. In turn, the neologism Merkelism is being actively used by the media of almost all European countries, although its semantics vary. Relevance is the main condition for a new lexical or phraseological unit to enter the active vocabulary of another language, which is demonstrated through the neophraseme Europa der verschiedenen Geschwindigkeiten. The connotational meaning of phraseology in a given language depends on the political situation and linguocultural characteristics.