Englishization as a Linguistic Phenomenon among Egyptian Youth with Reference to Selected Egyptian Traditional Dishes: A Lexical-Cultural Approach

Abstract

This paper discusses Englishization in the language of Egyptian youth as manifested in the borrowings of food-related terms. In the past few years, the use of English, and the neglecting and belittling of the Arabic language, have been a trend among a group of Egyptian youth who belong to a high socio-economic level which makes it worth to study and examine. Therefore, this paper attempts to shed light on this trend by describing the borrowed words to find out the motivations behind it and the consequences that result from it. By reviewing the literature, it is found that lexical borrowing in Egypt has been extensively studied by many researchers from different perspectives (e.g., Hafez 1996; Ibrahim 2006; Nasser 2014). Some other studies have focused on the language of Egyptian youth such as Nassar (2011); Abdoun (2008); Srage (2014); and, Warschauer, Said, Zohry (2002). The data includes examples of English borrowings of Egyptian traditional dishes and it is collected from Twitter. Moreover, Englishization is examined within the framework of contact linguistics as proposed by Kachru (2005). Then, a discussion of the impact of this trend on the social and cultural identity of Egyptian youth is included. Results show that three strategies in the Englishization process are frequently used in rendering the Arabic culture context into the English context; namely loanwords, compounding and metaphor. In addition, the results demonstrate how this trend can destroy the cultural identity of Egyptian youth and their cultural heritage.