Formation and functioning of diminutives in the speech of modern Let’s Players

In a situation of rapidly growing popularity of the video game industry, new models of interaction with the audience are emerging, one of which is video blogging based on games, or Let’s Play. The research aims to establish the linguistic features of video streams in the Let’s Play genre intended for children and adolescents. The scientific novelty of the research lies in describing the methods of formation, functioning, and classification of diminutive vocabulary in the speech of modern bloggers. The work conducts a word-formational, lexico-semantic analysis, identifies the functional features of the diminutive vocabulary of video bloggers. 50 videos recorded for the game “Avatar World” in the period from April to August 2025 were analyzed. As the results of the study show, in the video content of Let’s Plays, diminutive units in bloggers’ speech are motivated by various parts of speech, with the most productive suffixes being -к-; -оч-ек-/-очк-; -ик-; -чик-; -еньк-. Units from numerous lexico-semantic groups, which form a unique paradigm of perception by the subject of themself, the environment, and social interactions, is subject to diminutive transformation. Diminutives in the speech of bloggers perform various functions (expressive-emotional, phatic, euphemization of speech, social) and serve to reflect the Russian national worldview.