Emotions and attitudes in present day Russian through the prism of new words: Cultural semantics of zhest’ and related concepts

Abstract

Contemporary Russian lexicon is characterized by rapid change which involves borrowings, the use of new words and expressions as well as the development of new meanings from the existing word forms. The new meanings are indicative of new attitudes or the reinforcement of the existing ones. In this context, the paper considers the recently emerged colloquial use of the word zhest’ (from the primary meaning of zhest’ ‘tin’ as a type of metal) and the increase of use of the words zhestkii ‘hard/tough/firm’ and zhestko ‘firmly/toughly’ as examples of ‘internal’ language processes. The word zhest’ is a colloquial word mainly used in youth slang, but also infiltrating other types of discourse. We analyze its use as an interjection, as well as a noun in predicative and attributive functions. Zhestkii and zhestko are shown to rise in use and to be prevalent in the political discourse as a sign of power. The paper aims to trace the rise in frequency of the words under the analysis, study their semantics and establish links between the meaning of the words and broader Russian cultural themes. This kind of linguistic analysis with focus on cultural aspects allows us to identify culturally prevalent ideas in present day Russian. The paper uses the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) as a method of semantic analysis relying on data from the Russian National Corpus. Based on a detailed semantic analysis, the paper proposes NSM explications of zhest’ , zhestkii and zhestko , identifies connections between their meanings and the cultural themes of ‘emotionality’, ‘not being in control’ and ‘strait talk’, and recognizes the increased cultural salience of these words in present day Russian. The study uncovers trends of the contemporary Russian language uses and can be applied in culture-enhanced language teaching and cross-cultural training.