Lexemes vozrast (age) and vozrastnoy (age) as euphemisms in modern media discourse

Van Shoin Postgraduate student, Department of Russian Language, Lomonosov Moscow State University 89/2 Leninsky Ave., Moscow, 119313, Russia shoin.van@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Age is an integral characteristic of a person associated with the natural course of time, however, the periodization of age cannot be called fully natural, it is socially and culturally conditioned. Socially conditioned ideas about a person's age are reflected in culture as stereotypes, and in language — in the semantics and pragmatics of linguistic units of the semantic field (SP) ‘human age'. Certain stages of age — childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity, old age — are perceived in the public consciousness as significant characteristics of a person, affect his perception as a member of society, his awareness of his own place in society, the attitude of other members of the collective towards him, which finds its fixation in language.

Since ideas about age are socially conditioned, they change along with the phenomena of the surrounding world. Technological progress, medical achievements, etc. lead to a gradual increase in human life expectancy, which leads to a shift in the boundaries of age periods and the transformation of age stereotypes. The unwillingness of speakers to emphasize the negative assessment revealed in the semantics of the lexeme old age leads to the use of euphemisms in speech. In the most complete dictionary of euphemisms of the Russian language by E.P. Senichkina ^[1], such euphemisms are noted, indicating the elderly and the state of old age, as the age of Methuselah, evening (life, years), second youth, golden autumn, golden age, autumn of life (years), old age, elderly, respectable age (years), advanced age (years), respectable, older generation, etc. The composition of euphemisms of this semantics is constantly being updated.

Literature review

The vocabulary denoting age attracts the attention of linguists working in line with the anthropocentric scientific paradigm, and is the object of a significant amount of research.

The research of V. V. Golubeva ^[2], N. Yu. is devoted to the problem of analyzing age-related names of the Russian language. Mospanova ^[3], I. V. Salimyanova ^[4] and other scientists. I. T. Vepreva and N. A. Kuprina ^[5], M. E. Novichikhina ^[6] and other linguists made a significant contribution to the study of the problem of modern nominations of the sphere of age in the Russian language. The question of the linguistic and cultural essence of age names was considered by K. A. Burnaeva ^[7], K. N. Erkinbek ^[8] and others. Euphemistic names of age are analyzed by O. B. Volkomorova ^[9], Yu. V. Gorshunov ^[10] and others. A significant part of the work was carried out in the 2010s in line with the cognitive approach to language analysis and is devoted to the description of the corresponding fragment of the Russian language picture of the world, carried out, including in a comparative aspect, but not enough attention is paid to the dynamic approach in these works. Nominations of a person's age and their belonging to a particular age group react quickly to changes in the world around them, and therefore linguistic research, even ten years ago, needs to be supplemented and rethought. Continuous language dynamics requires constant in-depth analysis of the names of the sphere of ‘age’ as a dynamic group of words of the Russian language, which is under constant social and cultural influence. The formation of an anthropocentric approach in linguistics has increased attention to the ways of verbalization of information about a person's age in language, including euphemistic ones.

The purpose of the article is to identify the features of the meaning and functioning in modern Russian, in particular, in the media discourse, the lexemes age and age, appearing in euphemistic uses. Russian Russian basic explanatory dictionaries and the main and newspaper corpus of the National Corpus of the Russian Language (hereinafter referred to as the NCRR) became the material for the study of the meanings and speech use of these lexemes. All examples of the use of the analyzed vocabulary, given below, are taken from the NCRE ^[11].

Lexicographic characteristics of a lexeme age and age

The age lexeme is the nuclear one for the semantic field (SP) ‘human age’, it has the most common meaning for the field and at the same time corresponds to the archiseme ‘age’, which is present in the semantic structure of all units of this semantic field. The semantics of the word age is defined in the explanatory dictionary edited by A. P. Evgenieva as ‘the amount of time, years from birth, from the moment of birth; a period, a stage in the growth, development of a person, animal, plant’ ^{[12, p. 201]}. The semantic structure of the word includes a quantitative parameter as a mandatory one, so age can be estimated as large / small, larger / smaller, and the number of years as many / few. The semantics of the word presupposes the presence of a certain initial stage, from which age is calculated — the date of birth, birth. This stage is assessed as a stable parameter for a living being, while age itself is a dynamic indicator, suggesting periodicity, the presence of steps, variability, and growth.

The internal form of the word age reflects its connection with the verb to grow and the idea of a change in growth during a person's life. Although not every age of a person is associated with a certain height (small height is typical for children, short — for teenagers, tall, ordinary — for people of all other ages), it is during the first years of life that changes in a person are most obvious, confirmed by growth. In addition, etymologically, the lexeme goes back to the verb to grow (from which it is formed with the help of zero suffixation), that is, its semantics implies an increase in the number of years a person has lived. The prefix has a meaning that motivates this semantics: ‘the direction of movement or action upward' ^{[12, p. 196]}. Therefore, the age token can be called motivated, having a transparent, clear inner form.

Being a derivative word formed from the verb to grow (to grow), the lexeme age, in turn, is a generating word for other linguistic units, including for an adjective formed in a suffixal way, age-n-oh ^{[13, p. 108]}. This lexeme is missing in the explanatory dictionary edited by A. P. Evgenieva. In the Dictionary of Modern Russian Literary Language in 17 volumes, the semantics of the word age is given in one dictionary entry with the word age: 'age-related, determined by age' ^{[14, stb. 588]}. The semantics of 'mature age' are also indicated here, close to euphemistic, but marked as "outdated and colloquially" [Ibid.]. In more modern dictionaries, for example, in the "Great Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language" edited by S. A. Kuznetsov ^[15], as well as in dictionaries of neologisms, the euphemistic semantics of these lexemes is also not noted. In the dictionary of T. F. Efremova sees euphemistic meanings: the word age means ‘a mature period in the development of a person, animal, plant’, the word age means ‘having entered adulthood’ (marked colloquially reduced) ^[16]. The dictionary of euphemisms notes that the word age is used "instead of old age", and this meaning is colloquial, figurative ^{[1, p. 85]}. We consider the presence of euphemistic meanings in these lexemes to be undoubted, and we believe that they can be formulated, respectively, as ‘old age‘ and ’elderly'.

The euphemistic use of the lexemes age and age

The joint venture "age" is replenished not only due to lexical neologisms — borrowings, but also due to semantic derivation. This is also manifested in the fact that the semantic neologisms age in the meaning of ‘old age’ and age in the meaning of ‘elderly’ are widely used in modern language. In this case, we are dealing with such semantic processes as euphemization and at the same time narrowing of lexical meaning: instead of the semantics of age in general, of any age, lexemes indicate a certain age (elderly).

As a rule, statements where the word age is used in the meaning of ‘old age’ are arranged in such a way that the age in question (middle-aged, elderly) is not a mystery to anyone, it is quite clear. For example: "And one actress, who hid her age, asked the director: they say, what should I do to live longer?" ^{[11, 2002]}. In this sentence, it is quite clear that the actress was hiding her old age, not her young age or any other age. This confidence is formed due to extralinguistic factors, background knowledge of the speakers: both the author and the readers understand perfectly well that the actress will hide her age only when it is no longer a young age.

The following example is perceived similarly: "Despite his age, he continued to participate in scientific life, made presentations, and wrote books" ^{[11, 2004]}. The lexeme age is used here in a concessional construction, that is, it means that something does not correspond to the existing conditions, in this case, middle-aged — active scientific life. The concessive construction, despite age (without a definition before the word age), is quite common in the Russian language; in the NKRJ we find 356 examples. They usually talk about people whose biological and psychological age do not match: the psychological age is less than the physical one.

The people in relation to whom this combination is used are cheerful, behave like young people: "During rehearsals, I saw Kasyan Yaroslavich enthusiastically, despite his age, showing movements and listening attentively to music all the time, coming up with complex ballet interweaving of dancers" ^{[11, 2013]}. In more rare cases, this combination is used to describe younger people who do something significant, despite their age, that is, behave like adults: "The youngest riders, some of whom are only 4 years old, were the first to go on the ice. Despite their age, the guys confidently walked the track, striving for victory" ^{[11, 2020]}. It can be said that such constructions represent the desire of people to meet the age norm of youth — to be neither younger nor older. Let's pay attention to the fact that in the last example, the definition of own is used, whereas in relation to older age, the definition is usually not used.

If we are talking about women, then the idea of an external age discrepancy becomes more important, that this or that heroine looks much younger than her years: "It is true: for many decades Fateeva refuted her age with just her appearance, and even today she looks younger than her years" ^{[11, 2020]}. The ability to look younger than their years becomes proof of the extraordinary personality of the women in question.

At the same time, the lexeme age in the meaning of ‘old age’ can also indicate the presence of psychological problems in heroes who cannot come to terms with the onset of adulthood and old age, are tormented by the loss of youth, constantly pay attention to it. For example: "Guzeeva called critics "inexpensive bad people" and noted that they are very concerned about her age, weight and appearance" ^{[11, 2020]}.

Semantic derivation is also represented in the word age, used in the meaning of ‘elderly'.

This is undoubtedly a euphemism designed to soften the reference to old age. In modern usage, the word, it seems to us, has already lost its reduced stylistic coloring, and is often used neutrally. For example: "Earlier, an age-old athlete from the Sverdlovsk region died after an unsuccessful jump into the pool" ^{[11, 2023]}, "Pyotr Ivanovich was pale with age, tired pallor" ^{[11, 2014]}.

In general, the adjective age has significantly expanded its use in modern Russian, being realized in a number of combinations of neologisms: age qualification, age-related changes, age-related problems, etc. Some of these combinations may eventually receive the status of phraseological units. We believe that the combination of age restrictions, which is regularly used in various media texts, is especially close to this. In the NCR, we find 926 examples of its use. For example: "Companies providing scooter rental services are recommended to introduce an age limit for scooter management from the age of 16" ^{[11, 2021]}.

Conclusion

The sign of age is one of the most important features characterizing a person, determining both his thoughts, actions, social significance, and the attitude of other members of society towards him. In this regard, various names of a person and groups of persons by age are widely used in journalism. At the center of the joint venture ‘human age’ is the nuclear lexeme age as the unit with the most general meaning; the corresponding archiseme ‘age’ is present in the semantics of all other components of the joint venture. The joint venture ‘human age’ is a living, dynamic field and is constantly updated with neologisms of various origins, including semantic neologisms (age in the meaning of ‘elderly age’ and age in the meaning of ‘elderly’). As the considered examples show, in many cases the use of the word age and its derivative age is associated with euphemization, softening of information about old age, which is negatively assessed in the collective consciousness. The corresponding meanings, which were fixed by dictionaries of the mid-twentieth century as stylistically marked, became part of a neutral vocabulary and expanded the scope of use.

Since an increasing number of euphemisms are being formed and actively used in speech, with the help of which, as a rule, elderly people are called: an elderly person, 65+, a veteran, in the age of elegance, the prospects of this study consist in further careful study of the euphemistic components of the joint venture ‘human age’ and their reflection in media discourse and other areas the use of the modern Russian language.