Филологический класс (Dec 2022)
Socionym “Yuppie” in Mass Media: Sociocultural and Linguistic Transformations
Abstract
The article presents some results of a research project that studies the semantics of unity and animosity in Russian lexis and phraseology. Taking a semasiological approach, the authors explore the socionym ‘yuppie’, which belongs to social vocabulary and performs a nominative function for a social group of yuppies – young urban professionals. This category is viewed as a linguocultural type which emerged in the USA in the 1980s. The authors aim at revealing how the socionym ‘yuppie’ and its derivatives function in mass media texts. The research sample includes 42 articles retrieved from foreign newspapers and websites published from the 1980s to the 2020s. The analysis of dictionary definitions and real texts has discovered a well-established family of words with a bound root morpheme yup- (yuppie, yuppieish; yuppiedom; yuppiefy; deyuppiefy; yuppiefication; Yupmobile; pre-yuppie; proto-yuppie; anti-yuppie; Über-yuppie). The lexeme ‘yuppie’ and its derivatives still serve as motivating words for neologisms (deyuppiefication). Contextual analysis reveals the scope of the concept including its denotative and connotative meanings. The main characteristics of the type include workaholism, conspicuous consumption, weirdness and indifference to others. In the mass media of the 80s, the socionym ‘yuppie’ used to function as a pejorative label, which resulted in its euphemistic change for ‘the Y-word’. The socionym ‘yuppie’ has transformed over time: the yuppie type of the 1980s has lost its main denotative features and acquired another connotative meaning: envy of and distaste to ‘yuppies’ are replaced by a nostalgic flair in the modern media, while the lexeme ‘neo-yuppie’ comes into use to indicate new consumption models and lifestyles. The systematic study of nominative units that are used to mark linguocultural types helps to identify their main characteristics, as well as track changes in the language system in relation to social context.
Keywords
