Kravchenko O. Chinese youth slang in the Internet communication: structural-semantic, linguocultural and linguopragmatic aspects.

The thesis is devoted to comprehensive study of the stratum of youth lexemes, represented in the texts of the Chinese-speaking segment of the Internet, which functioning has determined the new vectors of transformational processes in the domain of traditional grammatical norms of the Chinese literary language. The methodology, sources of the actual material, slang history studies in European linguistics, particularly in the Ukrainian, English and Russian languages, are being described, the specifics of the youth slang studies in the Chinese language is being presented. It has been determined that alongside with the use of virtual slangisms in order to create an atmosphere of lingual play and introduce an innovative style in communication, there are also extra-linguistic reasons for the existence of the youth lexemes in Internet space. Such reasons are, firstly, the active public position of the young generation, their interest for the political and social life of China, secondly, their desire to use a special lingual code in order to avoid censorship. It has been shown, that the usage of numbers from 1 to 10 by Chinese youth is based on the principle of homophonic approximation of the basic hieroglyphs’ sound side to the sounding of the corresponding numbers.