Abstract
Running entered the official French language dictionary in 2019. This paper proposes to focus on the motivations which have led to the acceptance of this Anglicism in French. Indeed, running has achieved the performance of being more than the mere activity of running: it is a whole phenomenon which has been gaining ground since the late 2000s, as communities, events and derived products have been flourishing. Supposedly, running must have been a buzzword in the field of sports. But given its lexicalization, running could not just remain a buzzword. It has become a whole concept as it contributes to feeding the field of running in French through both semantic extension and precision. It will be of interest to examine the pathway of the Anglicism running from a phenomenon creating the buzz to a widely accepted and frequently used lexeme in French. The question of linguistic performance will therefore be tackled, thanks to recent online data, in order to show how running has become important not only in the world and language of sports, but also in the standard everyday language in France.
Highlights
It was maybe initially quite unnoticed, as it was in competition with the French course à pied, and the false Anglicisms jogging and footing: such a long lifespan maybe doubled with an obscure beginning – probably confined within a few communities of sports amateurs26 – does not necessarily speak in favor of running as a buzzword
The present study has focused on the newly integrated Anglicism running and its declensions in contemporary French
Was running a buzzword in the first place? Yes, as a buzzword is meant to trigger popularity and subsequent craze for it and for what it represents in given circumstances and period, and among given people
Summary
In the field of sports, the French course is defined both as the action of running and as a struggle and competition of speed, as one can read in Le Petit Robert and Larousse dictionaries. The Anglicism running and its French counterpart course seem to share similarity of context (sports) and similarity of meaning (running, competition, speed) – i.e. the very definition of synonyms (Rubenstein & Goodenough, 1965: 627). The core question of this paper is: why has the Anglicism running been integrated into French despite the presence of a French lexeme referring to the same sports?. My first hypothesis is that running has been integrated because it presents more semantic possibilities If this Anglicism has become a French lexeme, it is probably because it fills a gap which its French counterpart course missed
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