NEOLOGISMS IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH: THEMATIC GROUPS AND WORD-FORMATION PATTERNS

Abstract

The article presents a comprehensive linguistic analysis of neologisms in contemporary English, focusing on their thematic organization, word-formation mechanisms, and sociocultural conditioning. The relevance of the study is determined by the intensive transformations of the early twenty-first century such as digitalization, globalization, shifts in communication, economy, ecology, medicine, and mass culture which stimulate the active expansion of the English lexicon with new units. Despite a considerable number of scholarly works, the issues of systematizing English neologisms, identifying dominant thematic groups and word-formation patterns, as well as tracing their correlation with societal trends remain relevant and require further clarification. The analysis made it possible to distinguish the leading semantic domains of English lexical innovations: digital technologies and artificial intelligence, political and social processes, business and finance, ecology and climate changes, medicine and pandemic discourse, lifestyle, cultural practices, psychology, and interpersonal relations. It has been established that the most productive word-formation patterns include compounding, affixation, blending, abbreviation, and semantic derivation, which ensure economical nomination and conceptual recognizability. The study concludes that neologization is closely interconnected with social tendencies: lexical innovations not only respond to societal change but also participate in constructing new concepts and discursive practices. The theoretical value of the research lies in identifying the systemic parameters of the current neological process, while its practical significance relates to potential application in lexicography, translation studies, English language teaching, and media linguistics. Future research prospects include corpus-based and cognitive-pragmatic analysis of the frequency, functionality, and evolution of neologisms across various discourse types.