English borrowings in a socio-political context and their meaning in Russian

Abstract

English borrowings continue to penetrate actively into the Russian language. However, they are not always borrowed in all the meanings they have in the original language. Thus, the question of their usage in Russian is of great importance. The article presents a linguistic analysis of some words which are frequently used in a socio-political sphere: националист / nationalist, оккупант / occupant, сепаратист / separatist and террорист / terrorist. In each of these pairs, the Russian word was borrowed from the English language using calque. As a result, the conclusion had been drawn that such words may have different connotations in the language which is the source of borrowing and the recipient-language.