The linguistic markers of the "millennial generation" (exemplified by borrowed person-denoting nouns in the Russian language)

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the latest anglicisms (English borrowings) with the meaning of person. The emergence of such lexemes in the Russian language is caused by proper linguistic reasons as well as the global changes in the political and economic life of the country in general and in the socio-cultural sphere of every person’s activity. With the onset of the 21st century in Russia, there comes a time of a new generation of young people called "millennials". They have formed original trajectories for the development of society and its mentality. The collected linguistic units are a verbal illustration of the reality at the beginning of the third millennium, i. e. the time when the examined borrowings appeared in the Russian language. The empirical data was obtained from "glossy" periodicals, namely publications in Russian printed over the last five years. Such magazines are a platform for an intensive transfer of borrowings, including numerous person-denoting nouns. The paper aims to classify the data according to the thematic principle, to characterise the collected units from the standpoint of semantics, morphology, and graphics. Finally, the purpose is to present a generalised linguo-sociological picture of the new generation of Russians – the millennial generation. To achieve the objectives, the method of continuous sampling of the empirical data was used. The gathered linguistic material was interpreted with the help of synchronic analysis taking into consideration the descriptive, classification, and contextual ways of presenting the obtained results. The performed analysis has shown that the latest person-denoting nouns mainly appear in the virtual linguistic space, in the segments of the beauty and fashion-industry, business, labour market, mass media, show business, tourism, and others. Many linguistic units name new sociocultural phenomena characterising the "millennial generation". However, excessive borrowings constitute a significant vocabulary layer. These words have native equivalents and are used in glossy magazines for stylistic marking, making texts sound more "cosmopolitan", for prestige and other purposes.