Axiology of Neologisms in Russian Political Blogs

Abstract

The article presents the results of the analysis of neological units obtained by continuous sampling from the Russian political blogs, the authors of which are not professional politicians, but they support the current political course of the Russian Federation. These new words show changes in society thus becoming a way of creative understanding of the real world. Neologisms belong to the category of words that have high linguistic activity, which is conveyed by their expressiveness and axiology. The appearance of lexical nominations is an act of giving value to the objects they reflect introducing them into the space of social relevance. Having examined the features of political blogs an important component of which are comments to them, the authors identified 65 neological units, which were divided into four semantic groups: neologisms-toponyms; neologisms-antroponyms; neologisms-ethnonyms; neologisms denoting real or potential opponents of the Russian Federation. The analysis showed the agonism of Russian political blogs in which any opponent of the course of the Russian Federation is endowed with exclusively negative characteristics and is an object of ridicule. The positive evaluation can be traced only in a small number of neologisms-nicknames denoting foreign supporters of the Russian Federation or the first person of the state. All neological units under study, except for neologisms-toponyms, denote a person or group of people and are nouns. Having analyzed the word formation methods of the neological units under study, the authors identified affixation, telescoping and metathesis as the most productive models. Neological units formed with the help of telescopy have a pronounced negative connotation due to their uncertain semantic meaning. The analysis made it possible not only to identify new units and their evaluation in Russian political blogs but also to determine their role in the blog text, which consists in the verbal destruction of anyone who does not share the point of view of the blog’s author.

Keywords

• axiology
• neologism
• russian political blog
• internet communication
• digital environment
• word formation models