Respondent

Yemchura Nataliya Romanivna

Theme

Neologization of the Czech socio-political vocabulary of the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries.

Defence Date

22.12.2015

Annotation

Thesis  for  the  Candidate  Degree  in  Philology  –  speciality  10.02.03.  –  Slavic
languages. – Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Lviv, 2015.

The thesis deals with the study of the process of neologization in socio-political
vocabulary  in  modern  Czech  language.  The  research  is  based  on  neological  material
from the last decade of the 20th and the beginning of the 21th century. New words and
words with new meanings were collected from the dictionaries of neologisms, print and
electronic media, the electronic neologic database Neomat and Czech national corpus.
In this work the enrichment of the Czech socio-political vocabulary by new lexical
elements was analyzed in reference to intra- and extra-linguistic factors. The emergence
of new lexemes and new meanings in Czech is closely related to intensive political and
economic  tramsformations  and  significant  social  changes  occuring  in  the  Czech
Republic after 1989.
Attention is payed to the theoretical problems of neology, mainly to the typology of
neologization processes, to the various approaches to the term „neologism‟ in modern
linguistics  according  to  chronological,  stylistic,  lexicographical,  structural,  denotative
and  psychological  criteria.  Neologisms  are  considered  as  the  new  lexical  units,  new
meanings, actualized words, occasionalisms and potential words that emerged, expanded
or changed their functional area or connotative meaning during the 90s of the 20th – at
the beginning of the 21st century.
The lexical corpus, comprising more than 1900 Czech socio-political neologisms
has  been  analysed  on  structural  and  functional  basis.  New  lexical  units  have  been
classified into 9 thematic groups which are linked to new social and political concepts,
processes, realities etc.
The thesis also focuses on the main ways and sources of neologization in the Czech
social  and  political  vocabulary:  word-formation  and  semantic  derivation.  The  results
reveal  that  the  largest  group  of  new  socio-political  lexemes  was  coined  by  means  of
word-formation  components of  both  international  and  domestic  origin in  anteposition
and  postposition.  It  has  been  noticed  that  the  biggest  part  of  new  derivatives  is
represented  by  nominal  designations  (69 %).  In  noun  word-formation  the  most
productive  are  prefixes  (anti-,  ex-,  de-),  suffixes  (-izace,  -izmus,  -ista,  -ák,  -ka),
combining forms (euro-, narko-, eko-, čecho-, šéf-, -gate, -kracie). The socio-political
vocabulary is enriched by adjectival designations  (22 %), the largest part of which is
formed by adding anti-, post-, pro-, proti-, -ový, -ský/-cký, -ní. The smallest groups are
represented by newly coined verbs (6 %), created on the basis of loan noun stems by
means of suffixation and prefixation, and new adverbials (3 %).
The dynamics of the Czech language system is also supported by modifications in
the semantic structure of words. The most productive type of qualitative changes within
the Czech socio-political vocabulary is broadening of the meaning, which is based on
metaphor and metonymy.
The research highlights the important role of mass-media in the process of Czech
socio-political  lexicon  neologization.  Media  discourse  demonstrates  the  pragmatic
potential of the neologisms through the modifications of their sematic structure in the
new context. Moreover, lexical innovations as the result of word-formation of the Czech
politicians were studied. Lexical units which were “renewed” in their use and meaning
were also examined in the thesis.
The dissertation also focuses on the analysis of new designations on the material of
the Czech national corpus. It determines that 89 % of socio-political innovations taken
from the dictionary of neologisms occur in corpus texts.
Key  words:  neologization,  socio-political  vocabulary,  neologism,  methods  of
word-formation,  word-formation  innovation,  semantic  neologism,  actualized
vocabulary, functioning in the modern Czech language.

Dissertation File

Autosummary File