Self-nominations of German-speaking adolescent boys in Internet communication (on the example of nicknames): Linguistic aspect. Article 1
Authors:   Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov, Kaziaba Viktoria V. 
Published: December 2024

The author focuses on virtual anthroponyms, which result from acts of self-nominations, the so-called nicknames of German-speaking adolescent boys between 11 and 17 years old. The study aims at identifying linguistic features of the nicknames of interest and their descriptive analysis. The authors used Internet services and hosting sites Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, and TikTok as sources of material for the study. The study applied a random sample to select accounts belonging to adolescent boys from Germany. Part of the material was collected through interviews and questionings among the informants. Research material covered data from 2019 to 2022 and included 2,186 nicknames, questionings data from 114 informants and results from 125 interviews. The author subjected the collected material to a multifaceted linguistic analysis. The semantic motivation, meaning and nominative potential, structural and grammatical design, as well as the graphic organization of nicknames were described. The analysis of semantic motivation shows almost a complete absence of unmotivated nicknames, and only one fifth of examples show opaque semantics. The semantics of nicknames is characterized by a different nominative potential. In half of the cases, users preferred autonym-nicknames created from real anthroponyms. Just under a third of boys use pseudonym-nicknames based on common nouns or “borrowed” onyms. They are more characterized by evaluative semantics with an emphasis on positive qualities and biases of self-esteem towards idealization, narcissism and self-confidence. Hybrid nicknames, combining a real autonym and any other lexeme, make only one-fifth of the data. Their main feature is the name transposition.
Such nicknames have high linguocultural potential and indicate hobbies, idols, ideals of their authors. Variations of mono- and polycomponent structural models of nicknames demonstrate a high degree of derivational linguistic creativity of adolescent users. The overwhelming number of self-nominations were created using graphic means and techniques. The motives for using them vary from the overcoming of the technical ban on identical nicknames within the limits of some Internet services to the implementation of aesthetic, humorous attitudes and the introduction of additional individualizing information. The study shows that self-nominations of teenage boys have specific properties and characteristics as linguistic units, and also have their own design tendencies, explicitly and implicitly express the linguistic creative potential of their authors. The identified features reveal the extralinguistic conditionality of nicknames associated with the gender and age of the informants. Adolescent boys are equally prone to de-anonymization and anonymization of virtual persona. The most important thing for them is the implementation of initial self-nominative intentions. Nicknames have predominantly masculine, ameliorative semantics, conveying the need of their owners for recognition by a certain social group and inclusion in a problematic or cultural context of interest.