Word-Formation Characteristics of Anglicisms in the Russian Slang

Abstract

The paper deals with characteristics of Anglicisms that operate in the contemporary Russian slang with the emphasis on their word-formation features. The penetration of these lexical units into the Russian language provides a researcher with a linguistically interesting material as the English and Russian languages represent typologically different language systems. To begin with, the research focuses on the origin of the individual word bases and affixes from which the Anglicism instances analysed by us are formed. Moreover, we treat the representation of non-motivated and word-motivated lexemes. At the same time, word-formation means, methods and procedures for the formation of Anglicisms in the Russian slang are taken into account. The above-mentioned lexical units find their word-formation realization within these processes: derivation, composition, compounding, clipping, acronyms, blending, conversion, calques, fusion, univerbization and phonetic mimicry. Additionally, they display differences in onomasiological categories across the studied field. With respect to this, we cover the word-formation features of the processes: word-formation strings, paradigms and nests; word-formation types, onomasiological categories and types of onomasiological categories. The practical utilization of the research is possible in the areas of comparative and applied linguistics and translatology when searching for equivalents of lexical units in typologically different languages. Furthermore, the results of the research are applicable in the methodology of teaching foreign languages.