Libmonster ID: SE-492
Author(s) of the publication: A.V. ZELENIN

Ten or fifteen years ago, in response to the question: "what is soap?" you could hear (almost without hesitation or hesitation) something like this: "a substance (liquid or solid) intended for washing hands, face, body, etc." When I asked this question now, I often heard a counter-question in response-clarification: in what sense! This means that in modern usage, the word soap has such a wide and often thematically inconsistent scope of use that without clarifying or limiting semantic concretizers, people already find it difficult to answer this question unambiguously. At the same time, this word (and its derivatives) clearly illustrates one of the leading mechanisms of language development - the law of asymmetry of the language sign by S. I. Kartsevsky. Let me briefly recall the essence of this law: the plan of content and the plan of expression of a word are in a state of dynamic disequilibrium - the plan of expression tends to convey new semantic content, while the plan of content "looks" for new ways of linguistic expression. Kartsevsky gives the following example: "Suppose that in a conversation

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someone was called a fish. Thus, a homonym was created for the word "fish", ... but at the same time a new member was added to the synonymic series: "phlegmatic, sluggish, insensitive, cold", etc." (Kartsevsky S. On the asymmetric dualism of the language sign // Zvegintsev V. A. History of linguistics of the XIX-XX centuries in essays and extracts. Part 2. Moscow, 1965, p. 90).

In the literary language, the word soap has not changed its meaning, but it leads an extremely active semantic and word-forming life in the sphere of jargons and professional vernacular, which exert quite a strong pressure on the modern language consciousness. That is why the word soap evokes many associations-based on the language experience and everyday life of each individual person. If in the 19th century the word soap had two main linguistic associations: "detergent" and - formed by the mechanism of metonymic transfer-the derived meaning " horse sweat (usually in the form of foam resembling soap )", then in the 20th century the second association gradually faded into the background. In the second half of the 20th century, and especially in the last decade, the word soap (and its derivatives) has new meanings, which previously had no semantic references at all. These new meanings are concentrated in the field of professional designations (nominations), serving as secondary names for existing names.

The purpose of transferring the word soap to the field of professional vernacular is explained by the mental technique of impersonation (personification), preserved from the era of animalism to the present day. The Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) very accurately described the role of personification in modern life, culture and science: "Personification is a habitual form of spiritual activity, from which we have not yet grown up in our daily life. Who hasn't found himself repeatedly addressing some inanimate object, such as a stubborn cufflink, aloud and quite seriously, attributing it in a purely human way to its unwillingness to obey and reproaching it for behavior that deserves every reproach? But by doing this, we are not professing to believe in the cufflink as a being or even an idea. We enter, although not on our own initiative, into a state of play" (Homo ludens, Moscow, 1997, pp. 137-138).

The transfer of the word of an ordinary language to the concepts of special areas of knowledge or occupations is not accidental and not new: such a semantic mechanism allows a new concept to "integrate" into the system of habitual representations of a person by deliberately "understating" it and even making it semantic coarsening. Where did the new meanings of the word soap come from in the modern language, especially in its jargon-professional styles? We will try to answer this question.

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In modern usage, the word soap and its derivatives are grouped around several semantic zones: television, journalistic, criminal, technical and computer; in some of them, this lexeme is especially popular and rich in word-production connections, in some it is less frequent and not so productive in word-formation terms. Under one graphic and phonetic "roof" of the word "soap" in Russian, the most diverse designations of origin are gathered.

In journalistic speech, the word soap became known from the beginning of the 90s of the XX century as a tracing paper from the English vernacular soap " soap opera "(short for soap opera in the same meaning). At first, this usage was a fact of the language of television workers, but soon it got into the headings of newspapers and television programs that present and advertise various television programs, and then - and on the pages of the general press, moving from the category of exoticism (Mexican, Argentine, American soap operas) to the group of colloquial vocabulary of the Russian language: domestic "soap" in English. on the screen; all about "soap": TV shows can now be read; screenwriting contest "soap"; the Russian hinterland meekly watches the "soap" that is slipped to it, etc.

Usually, the noun soap in television jargon (colloquial) is considered only as a tracing paper from the English soap, however, in my opinion, the process of fixing this word could also be facilitated by the jargon-colloquial use of this lexeme in the sense of "something tasteless, bland (about food)" (Elistratov V. S. Dictionary of Moscow Argot. M., 1994. p. 259) with a further extension of the meaning (which is quite common in the oral vernacular) to the meaning of " something boring, primitive, tasteless (about any work of art)". It was with the support of the Russian vernacular use of the word that the little borrowed meaning was able to take root so quickly in the Russian language. And not just to gain a foothold, but also to put word-forming roots. In the press, there are homonymous derivatives of the soap opera "the creator of a soap opera": "From Western soap operas, our authors adopted only some technology of parallel filming, when scenes were shot in different pavilions at the same time and immediately edited and voiced" (Olymp. 1996. N 1) "multi-part series; soap opera" ("The soap opera ["The New Prince of Bel Air"], which lasted more than six months, had a positive response among teenagers and young housewives..." - Kino Park. 1999. N 10). The appearance of this occasionalism in the first sense is not accidental. In recent years, the word-forming model of na-ik with the meaning of a person has become very active: agrarian worker, alternative worker "a supporter of alternative military service; a serviceman undergoing such service", anti-perestroika worker, anti-market worker, budget worker.

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zhetnik, traffic cop, statesman, derzhavnik, contract worker, camper, beneficiary, taxman, thimble collector, wholesaler, perestroika worker, rynochnik and many others.

In the second sense, the word mylnik was also formed according to a popular word-forming model such as an action movie "an action-packed adventure film" and regular colloquial truncations: (video, radio) video "a video, a radio program of an advertising or informational nature", a cartoon "an animated film", a horror film "a horror film". Thus, the activity of word-forming models in the spoken language and professional vernacular contributed to the creation of the" model " word mylnik. Its appearance was dictated both by the goals of language economy (monosyllabicity, brevity), and the desire for semantic novelty and expressiveness.

Moving borders between jargons (especially adjacent or close ones) helps the" expansion " of words. So, from the sphere of television, the term mylnik "migrated" to the jargon (vernacular) of writers, so it is no longer surprising to meet the use of this word in relation to literary works: "The first Soviet "mylnik" [Lev Ovalov's stories about Major Pronin, created in the 40s of the XX century and which were very popular] has safely survived until the early fifties "(Ogonyok. 2000. N 29).

Another word-forming innovation was the combination of the noun soap with prefixes that have also become noticeably more active in the language of the last decade: Mexican telemylo; video soap is now plentiful; this film can be defined as a movie-soap-clip-rock opera; "telemylny" actor Jerry Seinfeld; cheap "kinomylo" (the last example from the dictionary "Words with which you can read"). which we all met" / Under the general guidance of R. I. Rozina, Moscow: Azbukovnik, 1999, p. 109). Thus, in the TV vernacular, the word soap reveals word-forming capabilities due to linguistic (semantic and word-production) trends in journalism. In addition, the above neoplasms are almost immediately recognized by people and can be interpreted quite easily by them.

One of the leading features of the word soap in modern usage is, of course, its use in the computer field: "email" or "email". This meaning was formed as a result of free phonetic and graphic (based on a language game) reading of English e-mail by computer scientists (short for electronic mail "e-mail"). One of the variants of this reading is the word soap (very remote in phonetic and graphic terms from the original Anglicism), the other is the words emelya, emelka (imitating Anglicism at least with their own

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phonetic - and partly graphic-appearance). It seems that in this case we are also dealing with the indirect influence of the colloquial use of the word soap, which was discussed earlier, and its interaction with the free adaptation (Russification) of the English word. Let's take a closer look at the semantic and word-forming behavior of the word soap in this semantic domain.

The graphic variety of the original form of soap in computer correspondence is amazing, so that sometimes it is even difficult to recognize the initial appearance: soap (in the masculine gender), emyl, E-soap, e-chalk, e-soap, e-soap; cf. also deminutiv mylce. The word-building nest of the" computer " word soap is very extensive. These are derivatives: e-soap address, soap box, e-soap box "e-mail box; e-mail address". There were also verbs: soap "send email", wash (in the same meaning), wash (the same), lather (in the same meaning), e-soap (the same). Stable phrases were formed: throw, throw, leave the soap "write an email, an email"; write with soap "send an email, an email". These words show that the noun soap (and its derivatives) fully complies with the Russian laws of inflection, obeying the inflectional structure of the Russian language. The program that allows you to send and receive e-mail is called myler (by word-formation analogy with many words of English origin with the suffix-er on the World Wide Web, that is, the Internet) andmylserv (e-mail server; see "Big dictionary of Russian jargon" by V. M. Mokienko and T. G. Nikitina. SPb., 2000. p. 364), mylnitsa (in the same meaning). The last noun came to computer jargon, most likely from related jargons: musical, technical, or amateur radio.

The noun soap dish has been known in jargon for several decades. This quite ordinary literary word got its figurative meaning "extremely simple apparatus, device, device" on the basis of connotative signs "simplicity, simplicity of the device"," uncomplicated form","mass use". The exact time of formation of this figurative meaning in the noun soap dish is difficult to establish, but it probably happened in the 40s-60s of the XX century. So, already in the late 40s, among radio amateurs and radio engineers, this word was known to refer to the MD-47 microphone, which was equipped with domestic tape recorders until the end of the 70s of the XX century. A little later, it was in this jargon that a soap dish began to denote any radio engineering device of a simple design (radio tubes, radio receivers, tape recorders) intended for mass production.

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the consumer. Therefore, it is not surprising to transfer the word to other jargons: first technical, then related (music, amateur photography), and later computer.

In the" Big Dictionary of Russian Jargon "by V. M. Mokienko and T. G. Nikitina (St. Petersburg, 2000), the word soap dish contains a wide variety of its "meanings", which - in fact-are semantically metonymic hyphenations: "primitive camera", "microphone on a flexible twisted wire", " plastic briefcase-"diplomat", "portable (usually homemade) radio receiver", " low-end tape recorder (usually of domestic production)", "Zaporozhets car". Such a variety of "meanings" is not difficult for people to communicate and does not create "informational noise and interference", since it is quite acceptable that even one person knows and can use the entire range of these "meanings" in their speech, but the concreteness of the jargon situation, the accuracy and limited lexical means within this semantic zone. they don't interfere with each other's understanding.You just need to know the language code of the jargon in question.

One of the most recent semantic innovations was the use of the word soap box in journalistic discourse with the following motivation: to launder "dirty" (illegal or illegal) income, money. This stable expression appeared in Russian as a tracing paper of the English slang expression to wash black money (lit. - "launder black money"). The relevance and popularity of this topic in the mass media, the need for a vivid verbal expression to indicate the place where this "money laundering" takes place, contributed to the birth of this occasionalism within the journalistic genre: "Mozambique as a "soap box" of bin Laden's illegal income" (headline). This occasionalism was born in the" crosshairs " of two trends: the need for linguistic expressiveness and the pressure of the lexical system (many words denoting this new concept are still missing in the language, so journalists are looking-more or less successfully - for appropriate designations for the emerging new semantic series). Obviously, this name will remain only a fact of journalistic speech, but the forecast in this lexical area suggests itself: the number of such "experimental" lexemes will grow.

Saint-Petersburg


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