Unofficial naming of mixed-breed dogs based on metareflexive material

The relevance of the study is determined by the sharply increasing importance of internet communication; by the need for researchers to focus on various spheres of Russian discourse, including cynological jargon; by the growing role of dogs in human life, which attracts heightened attention from scholars across different disciplines to cynological issues; and by the pressing problem of stray and mixed-breed dogs, and consequently, the problem of their verbal representation in cynological discourse. The research problem lies in the discrepancy between the extensive presence of cynological jargon in everyday speech and its insufficient coverage in linguistic literature, particularly regarding the peculiarities of unofficial naming practices used by owners to refer to mixed-breed dogs ‒ a form of response to the social stigmatization of non-pedigree status. The primary research method is descriptive, employing observation, comparison, and interpretation of linguistic data. The research material consists of metareflexives ‒ self-reflective remarks by speakers ‒ found in comments on posts from the Yandex platform. The study characterizes the unofficial nominations of mixed-breed dogs based on the fixation of naming and the conditions of meaning actualization in discourse (usual, individual, and contextual types). Both denotatively neutral and emotive-evaluative nominations are described in terms of their quantitative distribution. Individual nominations are analyzed both as a process and as a result. Within naming as a process, strategies of concealing or revealing the fact of a dog’s mixed-breed status are identified, along with communicative situations where each strategy is employed. For the strategy of explicit acknowledgment, the study reveals the use of melioration (the leading device in cynological jargon overall) and asteism. Within naming as a result, the mechanisms of forming unofficial breed names (imitations) are described, including metaphorical transfer, borrowing of foreign words, as well as morphological and compositional methods. The analyzed metareflexives indicate that dogs occupy a significant place in the psychological space of their owners. The study concludes that further research should focus not on the unofficial nominations of dog breeds but on the unofficial naming practices of the dogs themselves in Russian cynological jargon, as used by owners in digital communication.