Uncodified Vocabulary in the Language of Hydropower Engineers
The article considers the peculiarities of the functioning of hydropower industry workers' sublanguage slang lexical units. The subject of the research includes structural and functional characteristics and the vocabulary of hydropower industry workers' sublanguage slang. The study aims at presenting a multi-aspect description of the technical parlance of hydropower industry workers' sublanguage. By means of a functional and semantic method, as well as a linguistic description method, the author classified and interpreted the linguistic material collected during questionnaires and interviews with the workers of Krasnoyarsk Hydroelectric Power Station (Divnogorsk), Boguchany Hydroelectric Power Station (Kodinsk), and Volga Hydroelectric Power Station (Volzh-skiy). As part of the study, the author found out that hydropower industry workers' sublanguage slang taken together was nonuniform by a number of features. Except the genetic, functional and stylistic diversity, it is also differentiated by formal, derivational, semantic and semantic-cognitive features. The hydropower industry workers' sublanguage slang is classified by formation sources, a formal criterion, semantic features, by the classification feature of correlation with logical categories. Based on motivation/absence of motivation in the sublanguage slang vocabulary, completely motivated, completely non-motivated and falsely motivated words are distinguished. Most of the studied units possess the features of imagery, emotionality and evaluativity, which makes speech more expressive. The predominant functions of the slang vocabulary are emotive and ludic. The ludic techniques are revealed at phonetic, word-formation and lexical levels of language. Systematization of words similar in their expression allows distinguishing the following groups of words: words that express positive (hypocoristic, respectful, partly playful names) and negative (derisive, derogative, coarse names) evaluation of notions. The materials of the study can be used as information support in university courses on terminology studies and terminography, stylistics, lexicology, in special courses on professional communication. What is more, the results can be used at departments that train specialists for working at hydroelectric power stations to form students' terminological competence. The practical significance of the data presented in the article lies in the fact that it adds to the source study basis of national terminography and can be used in research works on similar topics.