Studying Jargon Vocabulary among Foreign Audiences

Until recently, the prevailing view was that only literary language was worthy of study, while jargon vocabulary was considered a distortion of the Russian language. Today, however, social dialects – particularly jargon and argot – are beginning to exert signifi-cant influence not only on native speakers but also on learners of Russian. It is im-portant to note that systematic study of jargon has emerged primarily over the past two decades, and there is no reason to halt this research, as jargon is a highly dynamic phe-nomenon that requires close scholarly attention. The main objective of this study is to identify key challenges faced by foreign learners in mastering Russian jargon, interpreting it, and analyzing the features of contemporary Russian jargon to facilitate its comprehension by international students. The primary material for this study consists of Russian jargon drawn from social media content. Re-search methods include surveys of foreign students and comparative-descriptive anal-yses of Russian jargon to determine general characteristics. The novelty of this research lies in addressing a relatively underexplored but systemat-ically developing area of restricted-use vocabulary, alongside the increasing number of foreign students coming to study in Russia. The study demonstrates that a key feature of Russian jargon is the modification of the original meaning of a lexical unit through letter substitution or rearrangement, as well as the creation of hybrid words—factors that may present semantic barriers for foreign learners in the process of acquiring jar-gon vocabulary.