Discourse Worldview on Freelancing in the Contemporary Job Market (Based on the English Language Material)

Abstract

This article outlines discursive representation of key notions, categories, and scripts constituting the worldview on employment in the contemporary job market in regards to freelancing. A new conceptual model of working relations is described, as well as its verbal means, including discourse neologisms that nominate various forms and ways of professional activity. The most common nominations for the notional field under discussion are freelancing, patchworking, gig-economy, binge-time careerism, zig-zag careers, and nomadic workers, which illustrate integral and differentiating qualities of the notional field of freelancing, along with discursive specifiers that concretize the worldview of the contemporary job market. The integral semes of the notional field of freelancing are ‘employment/work/job/business’ and ‘work from home or different places’. The differentiating semes specifying the notional field of freelancing include the following: ‘increasing number of people,’ ‘work for different organizations,’ ‘part-time/temporary/for a short time,’ and ‘not influenced or controlled.’ Discursive representation of the notional field of freelancing highlights the most significant notional qualities and specifiers that characterize the contemporary conditions and tendencies in the English-speaking job market: remote work, flexible schedule, work-life balance, talent realization for the self-employed, multitasking, short-term and intensive labor, frequent job and duty changing, quick adaptability, increase in competitiveness, self-discipline, independence, productivity, and progressive thinking.