Slang phraseology in the mass media discourse of the 21st century

The article examines phraseology from various slangs that function in the mass media discourse of the beginning of the 21st century. These are mostly units that have not yet been recorded in Ukrainian sociolect dictionaries. It is noted that modern mass media began to more actively use non-codified stable phrases and expressions from various slangs. Cases of reinterpretation of such language units by journalists have also been recorded. Often this is done at the request of the day. The main factors contributing to the processes of intensive entry and use of the analyzed units in mass media discourse are presented: 1) significant democratization of Ukrainian society in the analyzed period, which contributed to linguistic democratization; 2) activation of the tendency to colloquialization in many radio and television programs, newspapers and magazines; 3) change in the language tastes of Ukrainians; 4) non-acceptance by modern readers, listeners and viewers of dry, vague language, clichés, clericalisms, stamps; 5) originality, novelty, and most importantly – expressiveness, emotionality, imagery, and often aptness and wit of slang phraseology; 6) the tendency to language economy, which is manifested in the desire to use short, but extremely comprehensive in terms of semantics units; 7) the tendency to erase the boundaries between functional styles, the significant influence of the conversational style on others. It was found that phraseological units from the sports, youth, automotive, military, economic, journalistic social dialects, less often – drug addiction, artistic, and sailors' slang are actively used in the texts of the mass media of the 21st century. It was found that the named sociolectisms mainly perform nominative, informative and evaluative functions in modern media discourse.