LEXICAL AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF YOUTH SLANG

Youth slang represents one of the most dynamic and rapidly developing layers of modern language. It reflects the social, cultural, psychological, and communicative characteristics of young people and occupies a significant place in contemporary linguistic studies. In modern Uzbek linguistics, youth slang is increasingly becoming an object of scientific observation because the development of globalization, digital communication, social networks, mass media, and intercultural interaction has intensified the emergence of new lexical units and semantic transformations in the speech of young generations. The lexical and semantic features of youth slang demonstrate how language adapts to social change, technological progress, and the communicative needs of society. Youth slang is distinguished by expressiveness, emotional coloring, metaphorical meaning, brevity, semantic innovation, and stylistic flexibility. It serves not only as a means of communication but also as an indicator of identity, social belonging, emotional attitude, and cultural worldview. In Uzbek linguistic practice, youth slang is formed through various lexical-semantic processes including borrowing, abbreviation, metaphorization, metonymic transfer, semantic narrowing, semantic broadening, and phonetic simplification. Modern Uzbek youth actively integrates lexical units from English, Russian, Turkish, and internet communication into everyday speech, creating hybrid forms and innovative expressions. The semantic structure of youth slang constantly changes according to context, social environment, and communicative intention. Slang units may acquire new meanings unrelated to their original lexical semantics, thus contributing to semantic dynamism within the language system. The study of youth slang also reveals the interaction between literary language and colloquial speech, demonstrating the influence of informal communication on the development of the national language. Furthermore, youth slang reflects social values, humor, creativity, irony, emotional intensity, and generational distinctions. The present article investigates the lexical and semantic characteristics of youth slang within the framework of Uzbek linguistic scholarship, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and linguocultural studies.