DIFFUSION OF MEANINGS AND THE ROLE OF CODIFYING LEXICOGRAPHY IN POPULAR SPEECH CULTURE

The article shows that in the 20th century the system of the Russian language and its usage began to develop not so much under the influenceof fiction (belle-lettres) as under the influence of mass media. In the 21st century due to the enhancing role of the Internet everyday speech became integrated into mass media on a large scale. So the Internet together with the radio and television, to a lesser extent with newspapers, has become the disseminator of language fashion. Lexicographic codification weakened its influence, and its drawbacks (vagueness of interpretation) activated the tendency to reduce mental efforts in the usage of words, which resulted in the diffusion of meanings or the preference of the diffused word to its exact synonym. Everyday speech provides understanding, because it is related to the situation and immediate communication of the participants, who always a have a chance to ask an echo-question. Thas is not characteristic of mass media, yet they “impose” language fashion, which ultimately leads to language impoverishment, “newspeak” and hackneyed vocabulary. Diffusion of meanings is promoted by pop usage, time pressure, as well as the explanation of one word by means of another. The weakened tendency to use exact nominations and the atrengthened tendency to reduce mental efforts in word choice can be illustrated by the usage of “nadet’-odet’”, “dostatochno-dovol’no”, “shodnyj-po-hozhij-shozhij” frequent in modern mass media (based on the data from www.ruscorpora.ru). Positive changes in the usage of these words (except “nadet’-odet’”) that have been observed since the fall of 2012 give us hope to preserve synonymic wealth of Russian.