«ETHNICITY» SEGMENT’S REALIZATION OF THE CONCEPT «MULTICULTURALISM» BY MEANS OF THE XXI CENTURY PHRASAL INNOVATIONS IN THE MODERN AMERICAN ENGLISH LANGUAGE VARIANT OF ENGLISH (ON THE MATERIAL OF ENGLISH LEARNER’S EXPLANATORY DICTIONARIES AND INTERNET-SOUR

Abstract

The article deals with the ways of actualizing one of the most powerful linguocultural concepts of the modern USA - that of ethnicity, which stands out as a constituent of the basic US concept multiculturalism, by means of the American English phrasal innovations originated at the end of XX - beginning of the XXI century. Actuality of the research is conditioned by importance of a more profound study of the concept that went through the objective stages of conceptualization and got fixed in the cognitive-communicative space of the American English speakers in the status of the same name linguocultural concept with the help of phrasal innovative language units. Thus the object of the article are modern American English phrasal innovations that represent the concept segment ethnicity as one of the most productive providing spheres of new language units reflecting a certain part of the American English speakers’ conceptual world picture.

A number of modern learner’s explanatory dictionaries of English is analyzed concerning definitions of the lexemes multiculturalism to focus on the linguocultural specifics of the unit in question, as wells as a number of new phrasal units-Americanisms regarded as peripheral elements of the linguocultureme’s conceptual field. As the conducted analysis demonstrates, a substantial number of phrasal neologisms actualizing the concept in question and serving as its verbalizers can be taken into account as qualified and fullfledged constituents of linguocultural field of the concept multiculturalism.

The authors conclude that innovative phrasal units verbalizing ethnicity as a segment of the basic cultural concept multiculturalism having long become common in modern American English actualize both positive and negative aspects of the phenomenon in question, and namely besides the idea of cultural, political, gender and racial equality they explicate evidently racist constituents of the latter.

Conclusion is also made about the fixation relevance of such language units in learner’s explanatory dictionaries registers due to cultural markedness of the concept ethnicity and linguocultural potential subsistent in such phrasal innovations as language means in common use. The authors suggest designing special-purpose learner’s glossaries of an explanatory type capable of a credible and unbiased representation of the corresponding American English conceptual world picture part with the help of innovative phrasal language units.