Authors

Nadiya Ivanenko¹;  ¹ University of Oxford, UK

Discussion

The aim of this research is to study English morphological neologisms based on English-language postmodern Ukrainian literary texts. The ways of neologisms formation and their emergence in the language are described. The uses of general theoretical and specific theoretical and empirical research methods system include a description of neologisms appearing in the English language in the realities of large-scale military aggression in Ukraine in the context of general issues of linguistic neology. The theoretical significance of the study highlights the analysis of morphological neologisms in terms of postmodern perception. As a result, new speech units of the English language emerge in postmodern literary texts in consequence of the war in Ukraine. The following postmodern British, American and Ukrainian (in English translation) literary texts were analysed: Conflict in Ukraine by Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer, Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham, The Orphanage by Serhiy Zhadan. The last one is the key novel about Russia’s war against Ukraine and a powerful testimony to the horrors of the war in the everyday struggle of civilians caught up in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The author himself was born in that region and represents the generation of Ukrainians who were raised in the independent Ukraine. He is a builder of bridges in the artificially divided Ukraine, an essential figure of a profoundly human tale of responsibility amidst collapse reminding the world of Ukraine’s struggle for territorial integrity and the right to self-determination.

The results of the study show that during the war in Ukraine, new lexical units emerge and consolidate in the English language. A special characteristic of the sample of neologisms is their emotionality. This can be explained by the proper coverage of the course of the war, where the genocide of the Ukrainian nation takes place and accordingly evokes a spectrum of negative emotions. Neologisms are more than a code, they are elements of identity that describe a period of conflict and remain a reflection, if not a testimony, of all the atrocities suffered by the Ukrainian population during the war.