Occasional word formation as a realization of language play in Internet communication (based on Russian-language Internet memes and comments on them)

Abstract

The article examines occasional word formation as a productive form of language play in Russian-language Internet communication. The material includes occasional units documented in studies of online discourse and typical examples from meme posts and comments. The analysis focuses not on compiling a list of unusual words but on explaining how they are interpreted. An Internet occasionalism works when the recipient recognizes a familiar derivational model and simultaneously notices its deliberate distortion. This tension produces humorous and evaluative effects, yet it also makes the unit context-dependent. Without an image, a current event, or shared group knowledge, the formation may quickly lose transparency. The paper discusses suffixation, prefixation, blending, compounding, graphic hybridization, and analogical formation. Occasional words perform nominative, compressive, evaluative, identity-building, and text-forming functions. The boundary between a one-time authorial coinage and a network neologism remains unstable: repetition may turn a joke into a productive pattern, although frequency alone does not guarantee entry into the common lexicon. The paper also addresses the risks of interpretation: attributing authorial intention, confusing occasionalisms with slang words and neologisms, and the ethical limits of working with publicly available comments.