ВРЕМЯ ЛУЗЕРОВ
THE TIME OF LOSERS

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the peculiarities of the English loanword loser, which, according to the author, has become one of the key concepts in the usage of contemporary society. The paper focuses on the usage of this word in different languages, and to be more precise, in the practice of different cultures while placing considerable emphasis on the Russian discourse. Also, general cultural reasons for the word being so popular across different cultures (the feeling of the world crisis, the prevalence of virtual models of behaviour, life in “the society of performance”) and an attempt to distinguish different modifications of the notion in the Russian language are presented in the paper. It is claimed that in the Russian language the word loser and other concepts connected with it are a construct of the fight among different life ideologies, whereas due to the “appeal to moral evaluations” (Wierzbicka) this word becomes an element of moral discourse. Having become the description of all possible life problems, the word loser becomes an instrument for people to regularly reflect on their “life project”.

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