The dictionary of snowboarders’ sociolect

This article deals with the sociolect typical of the snowboarders’ subculture. In the same way as a subculture is a subsystem of culture, formed based on culture as the prevailing ethical, aesthetic and worldview system, social dialect is formed on the basis of lexical systems of the dominant language code and other subcodes. Therefore, elements of the snowboarders’ subculture sociolect are based on the lexicon of the literary language, the youth sociolect, the alpine skiing sociolect and the sociolect of climbers. As a result of borrowing, lexemes often get additional connotations, which are not always obvious for a wide range of people. A solution to this problem is the creation of a complete dictionary of snowboarders’ subculture sociolect, where specific lexemes (including professionalisms, professional jargonisms and terms) would be defined. When collecting the language material, the author used the method of overt observation in the environment natural for snowboarders - on ski slopes, at snowboarding competitions, at the premiere of a snowboard film. In addition, slang words were identified in the Internet resources on the subject in question by means of the continuous sampling method. In order to confirm the collected data, a sociolinguistic experiment was conducted among snowboarders in Perm, in the course of which informants were asked to write as many words as they think are related to the snowboarding jargon. As a result, there were obtained about 200 lexemes regarded by snowboarders as slang. They include terms, professionalisms and professional jargon elements describing the quality of snow, the level of snowboarding skills, equipment, tricks, landscape elements, figures, the performer and the riding style. These elements formed the body of the dictionary of snowboarders’ sociolect, which is at the moment the biggest one among all the known to the author of this article.