The thesis is concerned with the study of lexical innovations in the English media discourse of early 21st century – specifically its structure, language and pragmatics. The author characterizes the structural types of lexical innovations word-formation models and offers their classification. The analyzed innovations correlate with the relevant referents in this variety of discourse.
The priority is given to explaining the peculiarities of lexical innovations that constitute media discourse and its strategies: attention drawing, informative-interpretative, evaluative, and appealing to necessities. The material includes illustrations from online versions of English quality and mass newspapers and magazines of several countries (the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).
Lexical innovations in the English media discourse of early 21st century are subdivided into two groups: non-combined and combined which are analyzed in terms of their productivity. The process of constructing the derivatives according to the non-combined models is represented by morphological models as well as those of shortening. In terms of word formation frequency morphological models, which include affixational derivation, word-composition and blending, are the most productive. In their turn, the models of shortening appear to be only moderately productive when it comes to forming abbreviations, including initial ones, acronyms, and clippings. The findings indicate that low productivity characterizes creolized and elliptical lexical units.
The combined word-formation models are further subdivided into homogenetic and heterogenetic ones. Among the combined homogenetic models, based on the genetic affinity of elements and ways of lexical innovations word-formation, the model "Compounding + Affixation" shows the highest productivity; the model "Blending + Compounding” is characterized by the moderate productivity and the models "Blending + Affixation", "Affixation + Affixation" prove to be of low productivity. The combined heterogenetic models matching up the unrelated elements and types of word formation comprise two models of the same high productivity: "Shortening + Affixation" and "Affixational element of the initial type + Compounding".
The function of lexical innovations and their structural-semantic content are determined by the purpose of new words to implement the following strategies in the English media discourse: attention drawing, informative-interpretative, evaluative, and appealing to necessities.
The strategy of attention drawing is realized within the tactic of lexical innovations position arrangement in the statements, proceeding from the anaphoric and cataphoric organization of the new lexeme presentation, and the second one – explanation of the phenomena, denoted by innovations – is carried out with the help of the following techniques: detailization, comparison, definition, commentary.
The informative-interpretative strategy involves the tactic of informing, which is fulfilled by means of the messages content organization, and the tactic of appealing to the authority, which provides a point of view of well-known reputable specialists, experts, opinion formers, and officials. The strategy of evaluation is realized through explicit or implicit expression of new phenomena and is embodied in the tactics of shaping positive and negative evaluation. The strategy of appealing to necessities is embodied with the help of lexical innovations which nominate aspects of new phenomena that meet both the needs of an individual's existence and self-actualization together with sensual satisfaction. The tactic of appealing to the needs of an individual's existence is realized by lexical innovations referring to physiological needs, those in safety and affiliation, including professional, age, and social ones.
The tactic of appealing to self-actualization is represented by lexemes denoting events of social, active, dynamic, intellectual personal fulfillment. Ensuring opportunities in terms of sensual satisfaction is achieved by the representation of lexical units associated with the involvement of the participants of events to various types of art and creativity.
The findings of the thesis provide ground for further research, particularly in the area of cognitive mechanisms of forming lexical innovations involving a particular model as well as in determining their role in organization of other types of discourse. Future work could also consider a comparative study of structure, semantics and pragmatics of lexical innovations.
Key words: lexical innovation, word-formation model, media discourse, strategies, tactics.
