DEVELOPMENT OF NEOLOGISMS IN ENGLISH DIGITAL COMMUNICATION

Abstract

The article focuses on the processes that contribute to the emergence of modern English neologisms, as well as on the factors that explain their rapid and active use among native speakers. The lexical structure of the English language is often changing. These changes reflect the continuous progress of society, which leads to the emergence of new concepts that need to be named. Thus, neologisms arise, which are eventually used to denote new objects and phenomena. The article defines the essence of the concept of ‘neologism’ and its peculiarities of formation, the main methods of translation of neologisms from English into Ukrainian. The author analyses the comments under the publication of the President of Ukraine and the types of neologisms used on the example of the English-language version of Twitter. Various approaches to classifying neologisms are described. Attention is focused on the constant increase in the number of terminological neologisms in English and the need for their correct interpretation in Ukrainian. It is noted that the spread and evolution of information and communication tools and technologies, the Internet and social networks have become an integral part of intercultural communication, and therefore an important factor influencing the formation of new vocabulary. The most relevant spheres of new words emergence related to modern political events, internationalisation processes, and automation of information processing are highlighted. The main stages of the origin and consolidation of neologisms in the language are highlighted. Based on the research of scholars, the article interprets neologisms as terms that go through several stages of origin and consolidation in the language, are used in a specific setting to focus on a new expression or a previously known one, but used in a new sense and reflect linguistic and cultural changes in the language. The forms of neologism creation are investigated and distinguished: abbreviations; affixation; word compounding; truncation; abbreviation; telescoping; prefixes of foreign origin, such as -cyber, -hyper, -mega, -uber; affixes of the English language, such as -re-, -ing, -ism, -gate; combinations of word bases, which are divided into neutral, morphological and syntactic; lexical neologisms, which are divided into stylistic and terminological; and semantic neologisms. Analysing a sample of comments on the social networking site Twitter, the author shows that the sample includes 10% of semantic neologisms, abbreviations, the addition of the ending -ing, neutral combinations, 20% of syntactic neologisms, and the largest percentage (40%) is occupied by telescoping neologisms.