Contemporary French argot: structural and functional changes

The relevant problem of interconnections between language changes and sociocultural factors is considered in the article on the basis of French argot. 1000 argot lexical units from various sources, mostly, lyrics, prose works of literature and Internet resources are used for linguistic analysis. The article examines two periods in the development of French argot: 1960-1980s years and the beginning of the 21st century. The methods of argot formation are established and the following trends in the argot structure are revealed: firstly, the increasing share of mechanistic word formation (coding and verlan), the increasing share of metonymy, borrowing from other languages (English, Arabic, African); secondly, the reduction of the share of derivation, replication, other types of coding, as well as the decline in the share of semantic word formation (metaphor and metonymy) and traditional argot. The statistical data shows that changes of immigration flow in France, development of the Internet, the media and the birth of rap culture cause the argot structure transformation. These factors contribute to the change in the correlation of argot’s functions (loss of the secret function, extinction of identification function and the predominance of ludic function), as well as the appearance of a new function - the poetic function.