Pragmatic borrowing

Abstract

Previous research on linguistic borrowing has predominantly been concerned with lexis and terminology. This paper explores the notion of pragmatic borrowing, that is, the incorporation of pragmatic and discourse features of a source language into a recipient language. It is argued that a comprehensive account of pragmatic borrowing requires a careful inspection of individual forms through comparative studies of their discourse-pragmatic functions in both the source and recipient language. Although the primary focus of interest is the influence of English on Norwegian pragmatics, the paper fleshes out pragmatic borrowing in more general terms with reference to previous studies of other language pairs. It proposes a functional taxonomy that includes the direct and indirect borrowing of interjections, discourse markers, expletives, vocatives, general extenders, tags, focus constructions, intonation and paralinguistic phenomena. The study illustrates how pragmatic functions are transferred cross-linguistically, through notions such as functional stability, adaptation, narrowing, broadening and shift. It also illustrates the degree to which fixed phrases and collostructions are borrowed, focussing especially on English-based expletives, interjections and discourse markers that have recently emerged in Norwegian.