ANGLICISMS IN FRENCH AND SPANISH

LANGUAGE BORROWINGS IN A CONTEXT OF UNEQUAL SYSTEMS:
ANGLICISMS IN FRENCH AND SPANISH by Dr Christopher Rollason

ABSTRACT

This article examines a number of aspects of the phenomenon of anglicisms in contemporary French and Spanish. The discussion is confined to the written language (essentially in its journalistic, technical and business registers; reference is not made to the literary register); and to the French of France and the Spanish of Spain only. The issue of anglicisms is placed in a wider international context, taking account of such phenomena as globalisation and the Internet. Reference is also made to theoretical perspectives that regard individual languages as systems in their own right.

NOTE

This is the text of a paper given at the University of Surrey, England, in June 2004. It incorporates some material from two earlier texts by the author: ‘The Use of Anglicisms in Contemporary French’, in: Crossing Barriers and Bridging Cultures: The Challenges of Multilingual Translation for the European Union, ed. Arturo Tosi (Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters, 2003); and ‘Unequal Systems: On the Problem of Anglicisms in Contemporary French Usage’, in In and Out of English: For Better, for Worse? (Translating Europe), eds. Gunilla Anderman and Margaret Rogers (Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters, publication forthcoming). Neither of the two earlier texts deals with anglicisms in Spanish.

Essentialy, I argue that espite the higher profile attached in France to resisting anglicisms, (European) Spanish is actually succeeding better than French in stemming the flood.

It was published Lingua Franca (Brussels), 2004-2005, in 3 parts: part 1, Vol 7. No. 7 (2004), pp. 4-7, part 2, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2005), pp. 9-15 and part 3, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2005).

The full text can be read on-line at:

http://yatrarollason.info/files/AnglicismsSurreyPaper.pdf

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