Occasionalism and Neoderivatives as a Reflection of Linguistic Creativity (Based on the Comments on YouTube Social Network)

Abstract

This paper investigates figurative linguistic expressions that reflect features of creative thinking, pragmatic potential, value stereotypes, and evaluative attitudes and opinions of participants in discussions of comment sections under video content. Here special consideration is given to the thematic polyphony of comments under socio-political videos, including remarks, dialogues, ideological and emotional narratives, as well as those associated with participants in communicative interaction speech acts and interjectional phraseology. This study investigates mechanisms behind the formation of neolisms, through the phenomena of affixations, contaminations, phraseological and nominal derivatives, and wordplays with precedent names. The resulting analysis suggests a high prevalence of complex derivative occasionalisms that emerge from slang, substandard language, and colloquial forms, all of which often carry a pejorative connotation. The adopted methodology allows for identification of diverse strategies of language play in social media discourse, including semantic polysemy (combining literal and phraseological associated meanings), homonymy, wordformation and paronymic attraction, figures of double repetition, allusions, assonance, graphic hybridisation and deformation, as well as transformation of established expressions.