Cognitive Processing of English Slang Borrowings in Uzbek Social Media

Abstract

English slang borrowings such as cringe, flex, and ghost have become ubiquitous in Uzbek social media discourse. This article explores how trilingual Uzbek speakers cognitively process these borrowings. Drawing on a corpus analysis of 500 social media posts and a lexical decision experiment with 40 participants, I argue that frequency and semantic transparency determine processing efficiency. High-frequency slang integrates into the bilingual mental lexicon and is accessed as quickly as native Uzbek words, while low-frequency items incur a cognitive cost and rely on contextual cues. These findings align with the BIA+ model and the adaptive control hypothesis, revealing that digital environments reshape lexical access patterns.