NEOLOGISMS IN THE SOCIAL-POLITICAL DISCOURSE ON VIRTUAL REALITY

Abstract

The article seeks to analyse neologisms that are actively used in media texts on virtual reality and play an essential role in changing current worldview. The analysis shows that direct borrowings (anglicisms), appeared as a result of the foreign origin of new technologies, are subject to word-formation adaptation: they can be transformed through the processes of word composition, abbreviation, abbreviated derivation. Neoderivates with a few word-forming formants (-изациj(а), кибер-, нано-, нейро-, мета-, робо-, супер-, сверх-, гипер- etc.) acquire utmost communicative significance. Neologisms reflect certain worldviews, express ideas regarding mass spread and expansion of information technologies. The semantic structure of neologisms that serve as names to the phenomena of digital reality often reveals one of its component — ‘doubling of a real object’, which allows to contrast the real world with the virtual one.