The Process of Word-Making: A Cultural and Philosophical Analysis

The object of the presented research is word-making as a cultural and linguistic process. The subject of the research is the cultural and philosophical aspects of word-making. The research objective is to identify the essential characteristics and ontological sources of the subject’s word-making activity. To realize the research idea, the paper preliminarily reveals the creative nature of language, provides a brief historical and philosophical digression into the doctrine of Logos, provides relevant definitions of word-making, notes its communicative nature, and emphasizes the connection of linguistic innovations with various intrapersonal, social, cultural, and linguistic processes. Neologism, protologism and occasionalism are designated as the main forms of word-making, as well as the sources of their origin and the specifics of their socio-cultural existence are revealed. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the identification of ontological sources of word-making, which are divided into groups of subjective factors and objective reasons underlying the subject’s word-making activity. The first group includes such factors as the desire for accurate verbalization of thoughts and emotions, the search for original forms of expression of the author’s idea, attracting public attention and following the principle of speech economy. The second group consists of such reasons as the accelerating pace of modern life, the information pandemic, the development of the digital space and the emergence of new socio-cultural phenomena and processes. In addition, the paper reveals the conditions, methods and stages of word-making, as well as differentiates the concepts of “word-making” and “word-formation”. In conclusion, the specific features of “newspeak” as the linguistic basis of digital word-making are briefly outlined and the process of linguistic pseudo-creativity is characterized.