POLYSEMY IN AMERICAN VARIANT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL AND HISTORIC PROCESSES IN THE USA
The paper is a research into the influence of social and historic processes in the USA on polysemy in American English as exemplified in the modern American press. The timeliness of the paper is due to the fact that American English is going through a permanent process of violations of norms and standards in the use of words and expressions, the emergence of hundreds of new lexical units, changes in meanings of existing words and phrases. While writing this article the following methods have been used: contextual analysis and descriptive method (observation, interpretation and synthesis). New meanings of many words and expressions from the world of politics, social relationships and business coincide so much that some of them drift freely from one sphere to another. Sometimes their shades of meaning are closely intertwined that it is not always possible to draw the distinguishing line between their usage in different aspects. It often occurs during presidential elections that always give birth to new words and expressions, e.g. the word “goo-goo” had the meaning of unpleasantly sticky substance. Now it refers to politicians who are too emotional and romantic and are eager to please everyone. As for politicians who change their opinion easily, they might be called flip-flops. On the other hand, the flip-flop police criticize them for not being flexible enough. In general, all the people who are in charge of implementing principles of political correctness are referred to as “police”. The smoking police do not let other people smoke, women’s lib police stand up for women’s rights. Still the main thing for candidates is not to give promises, but to keep them. This is reflected in the language by means of new idioms, such as “to talk the talk” meaning “to assert the ability to do a lot of things” and opposite in meaning - “to walk the walk”. Some words now are just neutral forms of approval/disapproval. For instance, “appropriate” is a synonym to something good and positive. One more example is “issue” which may denote any problem or misunderstanding. In American English there is a group of such words as “to empower”, “to enable”, “to validate” used to emphasize a person’s ability to be independent and struggle for one’s rights. The verb “to empower” was first associated with women’s liberation movement. In modern American English “empowering” means something inspiring, encouraging. The origin of the verb “to anoint” is biblical. It denotes the process of putting oil or water on somebody’s head during a religious ceremony. Now it is employed while speaking about an appointment of a successor or a heir. In culinary it means “to put some oil, cream or icing”. After September, 11 2001 Scott Beamer’s phrase “Let’s roll!” said on the board of the plane seized by terrorists has acquired an extraordinary positive meaning. He called to fight with the bandits. As a result of the counterattack the criminals lost control over the plane. The plane crashed in Pennsylvania. All the passengers died, but Beamer’s heroism and his team’s actions foiled the hijacking. In modern America it is a motto for the whole country to do one’s best for the sake of the motherland no matter how hard it might be. In comparison the phrase “bring’em on” has negative associations after George Bush demanded boastfully “Bring’em on” in response to the announcement from Iraq that they were going to resist American encroachment. Though the war turned out to be not so easy as Bush had supposed, his imperative was imprinted on the national consciousness as a threat expressing self-confidence both justified or not. Both George Bush and Barak Obama are fond of using the phrase “make no mistake” to stress what they are saying, especially when they are warning someone. In political contexts a hidden threat is heard: there might be unpleasant consequences if the warning is ignored. According to statistical data provided by the Global Language Monitor these presidents have used the above mentioned expression three thousand times each. In social networking ordinary citizens call it “make no mistake epidemic” and would like to contain it. Being non-judgemental and politically correct have nowadays become norms of behaviour. Political correctness is an obligatory principle of communicative activity, especially among politicians. They tend to use words devoid of any moral or evaluating judgement toning down sharp details while going through such social and historic processes as people’s struggle for their rights, the events of September, 11 2001 and the Iraq War.