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Within the framework of cognitive linguistics, questions of nomination are of particular importance. The article dwells upon functioning of toponyms in the English mass media discourse. The central question is the semantic derivation of the toponyms in English-language news of the Reuters news agency. This paper focuses on the main cognitive mechanisms of the formation of a new meaning, such as cognitive metaphor and metonymy, defocusing and profiling schemes. The article investigates the nature of the formation of new meanings and examines approaches proposed by Kubryakova E.S., Iriskhanova O.K., Boldyrev N.N., Babina L.V., Maslova Zh.N., Popova E.A., Ch. Fillmore, R. Lanecker, J. Lakoff. The data of the study consists of 57 examples of precedent toponyms Moscow, Russia, Ukraine, Kiev, Washington, roaches Hungary, Beijing, Britain, Georgia, Kremlin, Turkey, Venezuela that have rich semantics and great potential for the formation of new meanings. These toponyms are also used most frequently in the context of the current political agenda. The toponyms functioning in the English-language news of the Reuters news agency were analyzed for the cognitive mechanism that underlies the formation of the meaning. The findings show that the most productive mechanism of semantic derivation in media discourse is the mechanism of conceptual metonymy.

This article dwells upon the functioning of precedent urbanonyms in the English-language mass media discourse and the features of their semantic derivation. The emphasis is put on the analysis of the use of the cognitive mechanism of metonymy to expand the existing meaning of a proper name and to form a new one. The study is based on the material of news articles published in the Reuters news agency in 2022–2023. As a result of the analysis, the main models of the metonymic shift are identified that are used to refocus the meaning of the urbanonym in a certain context. Precedent urbanonyms can be characterized by culturally stable associative characteristics. Their use for the purpose of nominating other objects leads to a shift in focus, semantic derivation of the name, which is not always realized by the recipient, but provides a field for the manipulative use of a proper name, in order to narrow its semantics or impose key characteristics of one conceptual- thematic area to another. Precedent urbanonyms are rarely used in the function of direct nomination in political news texts. They act as a kind of generalized (impersonal) source of information, pointing only to a certain state structure, not to a specific person, that also emphasizes the implementation of the password function of the urbanonym.