New vocabulary in the discursive practice of ‘Сancel Сulture’

In the era of dynamic crosscultural communication and unlimited flow of news coming from all over the world, people have a need to respond to various events by verbalizing their own emotions and feelings – to express their opinions or create a specific terminology associated with a particular social phenomenon. It generates the practice of linguocreativity and borrowing lexemes from other languages to describe events and characterize people. This article describes new EnglishintoRussian borrowed lexical patterns emerging as cancellation of discriminating practices resulted from a new impulse of the ‘Сyberculture’. The focus is made on the semantic potential of eight emotive lexical units borrowed into Russian: body shaming, fat shaming, skinny shaming, lookism, ageism, ableism, harassment and hair shaming that function in the media space in the context of the ‘Сancel Сulture’. The analysis of contexts from mass media and social networks showed negative attitude to the corresponding discrimination practices. It was also found that ‘cancellation’ could bring serious consequences for some Russian public figures’ careers, although unlike in Western countries – the motherland of the ‘Сancel Сulture’ – they are still not so massively destructive.