| Abstract [eng] |
Nicknames are informal personal names that convey a certain uniqueness of the person being nicknamed. The aim of this study is to analyse the usage, pragmatics and foregrounding of nicknames among students of Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda and Šiauliai higher education institutions. To achieve this goal, 200 students of Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda and Šiauliai higher education institutions were interviewed and 314 nicknames were collected by questionnaire survey. The objectives of the paper are: to provide an overview of the concept of nicknames, classifications of nicknames and reasons for nicknames; to describe the methodology of collecting and processing empirical material; to reveal the peculiarities and differences in the use of nicknames by students of Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda and Šiauliai universities; to study the pragmatic aspects of nicknames of students of Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda and Šiauliai universities; and to analyse the ways in which nicknames of students of Vilniaus, Kauno, Klaipėda and Šiauliai universities are actualized. The analysis of the research material shows that, compared to other Lithuanian districts, the use and inventing of nicknames is more frequent in Kaunas district. Students most often think of nicknames in Lithuanian, less often in English, Russian or Polish. Only students from Klaipėda and Vilnius think of nicknames in Russian, and only students from Vilnius in Polish. Most often, students create nicknames because of a person's activities, physical characteristics and name associations. The results of the survey showed that the majority of students perceive their relationships with both the recipients and the givers of nicknames as close. It showed that more nicknames are owned and used by men than women in higher education. Lecturers have more nicknames than students in HE settings, but students are more likely to use them. Although students and lecturers have an asymmetrical relationship, students do not shy away from nicknaming those with a higher social status. The study of students' nicknames from the point of view of the theory of actualisation shows that the most common method of lexical actualisation used to create nicknames is semantic actualisation, which is expressed by metaphor, metonymy and oxymoron. The least frequent method of creating student nicknames is phonetic actualisation – alliteration. |
