English on air: Novel anglicisms in German radio language

Sarah Josefine Schaefer

doi:10.1515/opli-2020-0174

Abstract

AbstractTraditional research on anglicisms has been undertaken in different media corpora. However, the media, both agents of globalisation and affected by globalising flows, and how they operate within global flows of messages and linguistic resources that characterise our mediatised societies have not been given sufficient attention in these studies. In addition, the German media have been repeatedly criticised for using anglicisms without explaining these, causing comprehension problems. By examining novel anglicisms on German radio from a journalistic perspective, this article shows that acknowledging journalists’ language practices gives a more detailed picture of the specific language used on air. This article includes an analysis of novel anglicisms in a self-compiled radio corpus and an examination of interview statements made by radio journalists on their use of novel anglicisms in radio content. The findings show that the claim made by previous research is rather oversimplified. Instead, a complex web of normative forces that shape how novel anglicisms are made comprehensible on radio is revealed, which includes the constraints of the medium, stylistic and journalistic genre conventions, the target audience, and the language perceptions of journalists.

Highlights

In our interconnected and mediatised world, deterritorialised cultural and linguistic resources that form global cultural flows have become ubiquitous (Appadurai 1996, Blommaert 2010)
The radio corpus contained an overall number of 874 anglicism types, which were checked for their appearance in German print dictionaries and their online versions
This study has shown that the criticism voiced in previous research on the journalists’ use of anglicisms without making these comprehensible for their target audience is an oversimplified claim

Summary

Introduction

In our interconnected and mediatised world, deterritorialised cultural and linguistic resources that form global cultural flows have become ubiquitous (Appadurai 1996, Blommaert 2010). Research on anglicism usage in Germany has shown that an increase of English borrowings has been taking place from the post-war years until today (Busse and Carstensen 1993–1996, Onysko 2007, Pulcini et al 2012). Similar to the use of English linguistic resources in Germany, other European countries that have shown such developments include the Netherlands, Spain, France, and Norway (Andersen 2015, Gerritsen et al 2007, Zenner et al 2012). What comprises the concept of anglicism from a linguistic perspective is not definable and has given rise to different opinions on the definition of such lexical items (Glahn 2002, Oeldorf 1990, Onysko 2007). According to Onysko’s definition, the generic term anglicism stands for English lexical items that are transferred from their source language (SL) to a receptor language (RL) (borrowings), for codeswitching into English, and for the productive usage of English lexical material within the RL (pseudo-anglicisms and hybrids). Other cases are unmarked in the RL and qualify as anglicisms if these show

Methods

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Conclusion