Gaming Slang: The Influence of Video Games on the Russian language

Computer games are of vast importance. They are both a part of a modern human life and an extensive source of linguistic production. What the article analyzes is specifically the formation of gaming community slang. The aim of the research is a comprehensive study of the origin and formation of new words used by people in the gaming field. Particular attention is paid to the specific aspects of linguistic production in the Russian speaking gaming community. In the context of this work, the data was collected on players' online communication platforms and via interviews with experienced gamers. Altogether 2340 slang words were analyzed. The goal was to trace the origin of new words in the Russian-speaking gaming environment. Given that English is the predominant language in gaming communities, some of the words got into Russian slang via transcription or transliteration. However, borrowing is just one out of many ways of word formation. Another significant phenomenon is the “interlingual homonymy” of words from different languages. The traditional way of forming words according to existing models (lexical derivation) occurs in the game world according to an affixal model (in the form of abbreviation or truncation). Often gaming slang is formed by transferring the name to a new object – i.e. semantic derivation, which can be built on the basis of a metaphor, a joke, or by transferring a proper name into a common noun. The most popular way is the metaphorical transfer of meaning by way of similarity with a game object. However, there are more complex options related to the semantic associations among gaming terms.