Deanthroponymic Contaminants as Objects of the Language Game (Based on Material from Spanish-Language Media)

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of anthroponymic occasionalisms and contaminants – lexical innovations created on the basis of anthroponyms – used in the Spanish-language media as part of the communicative strategy and creative potential of the language game realized in the course of the dynamic process that is characteristic of modern Spanish socio-political discourse. The objectives of the article are: a) to identify models of this method of word formation, and b) to establish the types of relations that appear between the components of the abovementioned derived words. Anthroponyms selected by random sampling from internet publications were studied, considered as objects of the language game, on the basis of which, as a result of deliberate word making, occasionalisms– contaminated formations that express, in addition to nominative meaning, expressiveness and emotive colouring – are created. The following methods were used in our analysis of the material: component analysis of the word; the word-formation method of studying transformational techniques; contextual analysis, which allows us to identify the communicative parameters of the use of language units and the contextual features of the implementation of their meaning in the text; the descriptive-analytical method to identify the essential characteristics and features of the linguistic facts under consideration against the background of extralinguistic factors; and the classification method and the method of linguistic and stylistic analysis, focused on identifying the specifics of individual word usage due to the communicative and aesthetic tasks of the author of the text. The relevance of this study is due to the attention of linguists to axiological issues, the increasing regularity of the use of language play in the media space in particular, and contamination as one of the means of expression in the Spanish-language media at the present stage, using anthroponyms as an object. Anthroponymic contaminated formations are becoming more common and diverse, and there is a need to systematize their models and study their structure and semantics. 
As a result of the examination carried out on a certain array of initial data, semanticstylistic and axiological functions of contaminants – mainly defamatory, invective – are established in accordance with the pragmatic goals of the author of the text. The models of creating anthroponymic contaminants by both occasional and conventional means of word formation are identified and systematized.