Compound Neologisms in English

The lexical level of the English language is the most flexible one; it instantly responds to the changes in the social reality in which the language exists and, therefore, the lexical system itself is susceptible to change. One of the results of such changes is the appearance of new words, neologisms. While vocabulary enrichment can take place through both borrowing words from other languages and creating new words using the resources of the English language, the latter is more productive nowadays. Although ample research has been dedicated to the study of neologisms, new formations appear at a rapid pace and their number in the English language is growing. The present study aims at analyzing compound neologisms, which appeared in the English language during the last thirty years and which are connected to the issues of discrimination of social minorities. The data obtained from dictionaries and newspaper articles has been interpreted in accordance with the theoretical basis of the research, the graphical, phonetic, structural, semantic, and stylistic features of each linguistic unit, as well as the particularities of functioning in the chosen contexts, have been examined.