Authors

Discussion

LGBTQ+ vocabulary is among the most dynamic semantic domains in contemporary language. Over the past decade in particular, it has undergone significant change: new lexemes have been coined for existing concepts (often motivated by considerations of social responsibility), new forms have emerged to capture previously unnamed realities, and established words have expanded their meanings through processes of semantic shift.

This paper focuses on a specific subset of LGBTQ+ vocabulary—terms relating to non-binary identities—in six Slavic languages: Slovene, Croatian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian. As this lexical field has so far received little attention in Slavic linguistics, and almost none from a comparative perspective, the study aims to address an important research gap.

The material for analysis will be drawn from two primary sources: (a) corpora containing texts with LGBTQ+ content, and (b) glossaries published by LGBTQ+ organisations and other groups promoting inclusive practices. Because such content is highly politicised in many societies, the study deliberately excludes derogatory or pejorative terms used to label non-cisnormative individuals and concepts. Instead, the focus is on the lexicon of trans and non-binary identities, as well as on metalinguistic innovations that mark attempts to introduce trans-inclusive language practices.

The analysis will consider the presence and treatment of this vocabulary in both general and specialized corpora, paying particular attention to strategies of lexical formation: borrowing versus native creation, calquing versus citation, and single-word coinages versus multi-word constructions.

The aim of the paper is to identify which lexical innovations have emerged in the past decade, and to examine how (and to what extent) they are already being registered in contemporary dictionaries of the selected Slavic languages, especially in recent dictionaries of neologisms. The findings will contribute a cross-linguistic perspective on how Slavic languages accommodate rapid developments in LGBTQ+ vocabulary, with implications for both linguistic theory and applied lexicography.