WORD FORMATION ANALYSIS OF FANFIC WRITERS’ ENGLISH SLANG

Abstract

The study of social subsystem vocabulary functioning in fanfiction online subcultures is an urgent task to be solved within the framework of modern Internet linguistics. The subject of the research are the English slang units used by fiction writers. The aim of the study is to identify and analyze the word formation processes in English slang units used in online subculture of fanfiction writers. The importance of describing the ways of slang units’ formation used in the speech of fanfic writers is due to active development of communities on the Internet. In the course of the study, the author highlights the most productive word formation processes: affixation, shortening, abbreviation, composition and blending. The corpus of collected slang units used by fanfiction writers in written online communication on thematic forums and websites was systematized. The paper identifies the most frequently used types of blend formation. Most of the analyzed blend formations are based on the abf < ab + f model, in which the first word is combined with the middle fragment of the second word. The results of the study may be useful in university English language teaching.