Linguistic Mechanisms Research Articles

Understanding dogwhistles politics

This paper aims to deepen our understanding of so-called covert dogwhistles. I discuss whether a covert dogwhistle is a specific sort of mechanism of manipulation or whether, on the contrary, it draws on other already familiar linguistic mechanisms such as implicatures or presuppositions. I put forward a series of arguments aimed at illustrating that implicatures and presuppositions, on the one hand, and covert dogwhistles, on the other, differ in their linguistic behaviour concerning plausible deniability, cancellability, calculability and mutual acceptance. I concluded this paper by outlining a simple theory for covert dogwhistles according to which they are attitude-foregrounders.

جریان الحجاج فی الخطاب السیاسیّ العباسیّ من خلال خطبة أبی جعفر المنصور فی أهل مکة (دراســــة تداولیة)

محور الاهتمام في هذا البحث هو معالجة (الحجاج) في الخطاب السياسي العباسي ضمن إطار لساني تداولي، إذ استأنسنا في معالجتنا بالمقاربات التداولية والبلاغية التي رکزت في بحثها على دراسة اللغة وفق استعمال الأفراد لها. ويتکئ البحث على فرضية، تتمثل في رغم أساسية وظيفة الإبلاغ والإخبار للغة، فإن اللغة منفتحة على الإنجاز، مما ساعد على انبثاق وظائف متعددة، تنفذ من خلال اللغة، ومن تلک الوظائف وظيفة المحاججة والإقناع، ويستمد هذا التصور مشروعيته من خلال دراسة الخطاب بجانبيه: السياق المقالي، والسياق المقامي معا. وتکتسب قيمة الموضوع أهميتها من إبراز البعد الحجاجي في الموروث التراثي من خلال تسليط الضوء على خطاب، يعود إلى العصر العباسي، وسبب اختيارنا شخصية أبي جعفر المنصور؛ لتکون خطبته مدونة لغوية، يعود إلى سببين، هما، الأول: أردنا أن نثبت نجاعة تطبيق النظريات الحديثة على النصوص القديمة، والثاني: يعد الخطاب المنتخب أول خطاب سياسي، يلقيه الفاعل السياسي أمام الجمهور، فکان مضطرا إلى حشد الحجج الإقناعية؛ لتطويع ولائهم، وکسبه. ومن أبرز النتائج التي توصلنا إليها: اضطلاع اللغة بعدة وظائف مختلفة، فهي منفتحة على استعمال الأفراد لها، ومن تلک الوظائف وظيفة الحجاج، فالمتکلم يسعى من خلال توظيف الآليات اللغوية المختلفة إلى إقناع المتلقي، وتطويعه. This research sought to treat (argumentation) in the Abbasid political discourse within a linguistic, pragmatic framework as we depend in our treatment on pragmatic rhetorical approaches that focus on the study of language according to the individual's use of it. The research depended on the assumption that despite the basic function of reporting and informing the language, the language is open to achievement, which helped in the emergence of multiple functions, which are implemented through the language, and from these functions the function of argument and persuasion. Such perception derives the language legitimacy by studying the discourse on both sides (speech & context). The value of the topic acquires its importance by highlighting the argumentation dimension in the heritage by shedding light on a discourse dating back to the Abbasid era, and the reason for our choosing the personality of Abu Jaafar Al-Mansour. For his speech to be a linguistic record, it goes back to two reasons: the first (we wanted to prove the effectiveness of applying modern theories to ancient texts), and the second (the elected speech was the first political speech delivered by the political actor before the public, so he was forced to muster persuasive arguments to obey their loyalty. Among the most prominent results that we have reached: Language assumes several different functions as it is open to individuals' use, and among those functions is the function of argumentation, so the speaker seeks, through employing different linguistic mechanisms, to persuade and adapt the recipient.

BAD WORDS IN THE GOOD PLACE: ANALYZING THE EUPHEMISTIC FUNCTION OF WORDPLAYS IN SUBTITLING AND DUBBING – A CASE OF ENGLISH AND PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE PAIR

In this paper, we examine the translation of euphemistic wordplays used in The Good Place, an American fantasy comedy television series. Twenty-eight wordplays, resulting from censored curse words, were collected from the Netflix platform, and compared with their counterparts in Brazilian Portuguese, to verify whether the adopted linguistic mechanisms preserved their pragmatic effect, and whether they were consistently transferred into the target language in the dubbed and subtitled versions of the series. Our study basically drew on the ideas by Delabastita (1996); Gotlieb (1997); Tagnin (2005); Diaz Cintas (2010); Dias Cintas & Orero (2010); Remael (2010); Darta (2020), and Brezolin (2020a). Our results demonstrate that, out of the 28 occurrences, 25 wordplays in the dubbed version and 10 in the subtitled version were successfully transferred into the target language, that is, they were adapted to the local setting, and then, preserved their humorous effect; and 3 in the dubbed version and 18 in the subtitled version were replaced by non-wordplays, or omitted. The successful results in the target language were not so consistent as the original excerpts in terms of lexical choices, and the dubbed version demonstrated to be more consistent once most of the wordplays were translated, and more suitable lexical items were selected to generate them. 
 
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Being “geek” in digital communication: The case of Chinese online customer reviews

In popular culture, the stereotypically iconized “geek” can be identified in different media narratives from mainstream television to magazines. Drawing upon insights from sociolinguistics and business communication studies, this paper attempts to identify the discursive constructs of “being geek” in Chinese digital business communication. By collecting the discourse data of online customer reviews from amazon.cn and analyzing the data based on the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, the study investigates how linguistic mechanisms operate in the shaping of geek culture and the construction of “being geek” in the participatory communication of business. The results revealed lexical variables and generic intertextuality are prominent in the discourse construction of “being geek”, to create a stimulus for a promotional culture in business communication.

To the Question of Linguocognitive Qualification of Folk Riddles (on the Material of Russian and Azerbaijan Languages)

In the presented article, folk riddles are subjected to linguocognitive analysis. Riddles have traditionally been studied either in literary or in a purely linguistic (structural and semantic) aspects, which turn out to be weak in terms of revealing the entire system of explicated and implicit patterns of architectonics of a not so voluminous, but rather complex linguistic and ethnocultural mechanism of folk riddles. Based on the current situation, we considered it necessary to illuminate the named units in the aspect of their linguocognitive comprehension in the space of a comparative typology - on the material of unrelated languages. Due to the limited possibilities of communication, we focused only on the main parameters of the linguocognitive analysis of riddles – the properties of anthropocentricity, conceptual base and internal form.Riddles are anthropocentric through and through, their conceptual base, as a rule, is associated with the disclosure of objects and phenomena precisely in their conceptual hypostasis: answers are always nominations of concepts, and not the names of objects and phenomena in their dictionary sense.The analytic-synthetic structure of riddles, more than any other linguistic unit, reveals the deep connections of language with the creative thinking of the speaking subject, most clearly explicates the so-called internal form of the linguistic unit, conditioned by the “national spirit of the ethnos”.The analysis once again confirms the need for a systemic linguo-cognitive understanding of the named units of the small genre of folklore, especially in its typological implementation.

Electoral Defeat, Conversational Practices of Blame and Avoidance of Responsibility in Nigerian Media Political Discourses

This paper addresses electoral defeat suffered by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) at the 2015 presidential polls and the communicative character of blame and avoidance of responsibility as evident in the Nigerian media political discourses. Discourse analysts are yet to study the linguistic aspects of blame and avoidance of responsibility in great details. This work is intended as a contribution towards filling this lacuna in knowledge by examining the conversational discursive practices adopted by Nigerian politicians in the circumstances of blame risk to achieve the twin goals of positive self-presentation and consolidation of political capital (Hansson, 2015). Some PDP members enlisted the discursive strategies of blame avoidance, in which blames and denials are carefully and strategically planned to serve positive self-representation (semantic macro-strategy of in-group favouritism) and negative other-representation, that is, semantic macro-strategy of derogation of out-group, (https://www.hse.ru/en/). We illustrate the linguistic mechanism of blame and avoidance of responsibility and how it thrives as a dominant recurrent theme in conflict talk and public communication discourses. The findings tend to enrich and enliven the literature on discourse studies and by extension open fresh vistas of critical research into language use in politics.

Testimonial Injustice: Linguistic Bias in the Medical Records of Black Patients and Women.

Black Americans and women report feeling doubted or dismissed by health professionals. To identify linguistic mechanisms by which physicians communicate disbelief of patients in medical records and then to explore racial and gender differences in the use of such language. Cross-sectional. All notes for patients seen in an academic ambulatory internal medicine practice in 2017. A content analysis of 600 clinic notes revealed three linguistic features suggesting disbelief: (1) quotes (e.g., had a "reaction" to the medication); (2) specific "judgment words" that suggest doubt (e.g., "claims" or "insists"); and (3) evidentials, a sentence construction in which patients' symptoms or experience is reported as hearsay. We used natural language processing to evaluate the prevalence of these features in the remaining notes and tested differences by race and gender, using mixed-effects regression to account for clustering of notes within patients and providers. Our sample included 9251 notes written by 165 physicians about 3374 unique patients. Most patients were identified as Black (74%) and female (58%). Notes written about Black patients had higher odds of containing at least one quote (OR 1.48, 95% CI 1.20-1.83) and at least one judgment word (OR 1.25, 95% CI 1.02-1.53), and used more evidentials (β 0.32, 95% CI 0.17-0.47), compared to notes of White patients. Notes about female vs. male patients did not differ in terms of judgment words or evidentials but had a higher odds of containing at least one quote (OR 1.22, 95% CI 1.05-1.44). Black patients may be subject to systematic bias in physicians' perceptions of their credibility, a form of testimonial injustice. This is another potential mechanism for racial disparities in healthcare quality that should be further investigated and addressed.

On the Forms and Thorns of Linguistic Indeterminacy in Chinese Law

Abstract This study addresses the different types and implications of linguistic indeterminacy in Chinese law. It firstly draws on the studies of scholars of different disciplines, such as linguistics and philosophy of language, to provide a taxonomy of indeterminacy in language. It then provides examples of each type, highlighting the implications in law and legal interpretation. It uses linguistic data from various texts, such as statutory laws and judgements, and analyses them with various methods, including discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. This study argues that when the language of the law is indeterminate, the legal outcomes may be particularly uncertain. It suggests that although it is difficult to ascertain whether the degree of indeterminacy is higher in some languages more than in others, some linguistic mechanisms at the word-formation level in Chinese, such as portmanteaus and the modifier-modified structure, are remarkably ambiguous. When uncertain terms are in key parts of the law, the consequences may be more serious. The study of linguistic indeterminacy in Chinese has implications for the study of forensic linguistics, and Chinese studies in general.

Postcolonial Bonds? Latin American Origins, Discrimination, and Sense of Belonging to Spain

The present study examines the costs of discrimination and cultural-linguistic differences for the development of migrants’ sense of belonging to the receiving society. Focusing on Latin Americans in Spain allows shedding light on the cultural and linguistic mechanisms involved in this process. Migration scholars have long recognized the importance of belonging as a key indicator of integration. An analysis of belonging has clear relevance to settlement policies and programs to prevent social fragmentation or isolation of immigrants. This article takes a fresh approach to explore the development of migrants’ sense of belonging to the receiving society by drawing on an original survey data set collected in 25 highly diverse territories in Spain ( N = 2,648). The results show that cultural and linguistic affinity matter: There is a greater predisposition among immigrants born in Latin America to identify themselves as Spaniards, compared with other immigrant groups. However, self-reported discrimination and deficient residential settings seem to be hindering the development of a significant feeling of belonging to Spain, also among Latin Americans. Public policies aimed at decreasing discrimination against migrants, as well as improving migrant neighborhoods, will favor the integration of these immigrants and their descendants.

Linguistic mechanisms of coherence in aphasic and non-aphasic discourse

ABSTRACT Background Coherence is the quality that distinguishes discourse from a random collection of sentences. People with aphasia have been reported to produce less-coherent discourse than non-language-impaired speakers. It is largely unclear how coherence is established in natural language and what leads to its impairment in aphasia. Aims This paper presents a cross-methodological investigation on coherence in the discourse of Russian native speakers with and without aphasia. The purpose of this study was to examine the connection between language impairments in aphasia and different aspects of discourse coherence in order to determine the linguistic mechanisms that could be involved in establishing and maintaining it. Methods & Procedures Coherence was operationalised as a combination of four aspects: informativeness, clarity, connectedness, and understandability. Twenty participants were asked to retell the content of a short movie. The retellings were annotated using Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), a formalistic framework for discourse-structure analysis. Next, they were evaluated for coherence on a four-point scale by trained raters. The ratings were compared between groups. A classification analysis was performed to determine whether the ratings could be predicted based on the macrolinguistic variables collected from the RST annotations and several microlinguistic variables previously linked to coherence. Result Retellings produced by speakers with aphasia received lower ratings than those of control participants on all aspects of coherence. The results indicate that different combinations of microlinguistic and discourse-structure variables play a role in establishing each of the coherence aspects. Conclusions Our results provided supporting evidence on coherence impairment in aphasia. Perception of a discourse as more or less coherent was associated with both microlinguistic and macrolinguistic variables, with different combinations of variables relevant for each of the aspects. Furthermore, we found that discourse structure plays an important role, especially for understandability. We speculate that pragmatic knowledge shared by interlocutors may boost the coherence of aphasic discourse.

Disseminating knowledge: A discourse analysis of terrorism in TED talks

This study aims to investigate the linguistic mechanism of disseminating knowledge about terrorism by professionals to laypersons in TED Talks. The study examines the interface between knowledge, meaning and social practices in terms of text and context when speakers cognitively reconceptualize terrorism discourse as a professional practice and maintain their stance over social issues. Drawing on a multidisciplinary approach of discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, the study sets out to analyse the discursive representation of terrorism in TED talks delivered between 2002 and 2019, focusing on explanation strategies of definition, description, denomination and metaphor. The results revealed that TED talks’ discourse was a less popularised genre regarding terrorism, marked by specialised terms of traditional right discourse of military actions, and impersonal reference for private intentions of building up expert identity.

Discourse, structure and history

Mostra Paul Ricoeur que o sentido do discurso se constrói, de um lado, por meio de coerções internas e, de outro, pela relação com outros discursos. Isso significa que ele é, ao mesmo tempo, integralmente linguístico e inteiramente histórico. Em outras palavras, é uma estrutura e um objeto histórico. Este texto pretende mostrar que na análise discursiva é preciso, de um lado, levar em conta os mecanismos linguísticos de organização discursiva; de outro, sua historicidade constitutiva. O texto, manifestação do discurso, não é uma grande frase nem um amontoado de frases, mas possui uma organização semântica própria. O discurso, por sua vez, não é reflexo de acontecimentos externos a ele. Por isso, estudar seu caráter histórico não é contar anedotas sobre suas condições de produção nem inventariar as referências que são feitas a fatos ocorridos na época em que foi produzido. A partir do conceito bakhtiniano de dialogismo, é preciso considerar que o discurso é histórico porque se constitui numa relação de conflito com outros discursos. Perceber esse movimento de contradições é que permite apreender a historicidade intrínseca do sentido, que se constitui historicamente. A historicidade atinge também a estrutura, pois ela é um modo de organização peculiar a uma dada formação discursiva. Assim, não existe uma dicotomia entre estrutural e histórico, pois a estrutura é histórica.

Composition as A Way of Forming the Terms of Medical Instruments and Surgical Devices in Modern Chinese

Studying any foreign language, involves a detailed study of all its aspects including Chinese. Medical instruments and equipment are one of the most significant components of contemporary medicine. 构词法gòucífǎ- word formation is the process of creating new words based on existing language units. In this aspect, word formation is considered as one of the most significant means in replenishing the vocabulary of the language. New words in a language are formed according to certain rules, models and schemes - according to certain patterns, which form a certain linguistic mechanism, which is called word formation. As a result of compounding, complex words are formed, between the components of which there are usually similar relationships, the basic models of compounding are developed in the works of A.I. Ivanov and E.D. Polivanov, I.M. Oshanin, V.M. Solntsev, N.N. Korotkov, as well as in the works of such Chinese linguists as Lu Zhiwei, Zhang Shoukang, Ren Xuelyang, and others. In this article, we give examples of the structural models of word formation of Lu Zhiwei.

Forms of manipulation in the discourse of social advertising

The article examines the specifics of using manipulation techniques in the discourse of social advertising. It is proposed to refer to manipulation the methods of distorting the linguistic picture of the addressee’s world with the help of the possibilities provided by linguistic mechanisms. The research material was 12,000 posters collected by the continuous sampling method from various media banks on the Internet. The authors refer to the most frequent manipulation techniques, objectively inherent in the discourse of social advertising, the distortions in the intensity of promoting ideas in the public consciousness, and the use of pseudo-rational arguments. The presence of these manipulation techniques is due to the fact that social advertising posters are produced most often by public funds that seek to promote only the ideas that are close to them. A situation arises when not those values that are more important for society are more actively promoted, but those that have material support from funds. The ideas promoted by different funds may conflict with each other and with the traditional values of the nation. In this “war of ideas”, two situations should be distinguished: 1) advertising encroaches on the values, which are traditionally recognized as important and promoted by state advertising (for example, for same-sex marriage, against vaccinations, etc.). 2) advertising raises questions regarding the settlement of relationships between people. Usually, such relationships have many options, so it is impossible to establish clear boundaries of a positive or negative attitude towards an object. Different funds interpret such situations in various ways in accordance with their ideology. Another active form of manipulation is the use of various forms of statistics that cannot be verified and which do not have any authoritative source behind them.

Түрік және Қазақ мақал-мәтелдеріндегі табиғат құбылыстары атауларының семантикалық ерекшеліктері

The reflection in proverbs and sayings of the names of natural phenomena in the Turkish and Kazakh languages is an urgent topic that requires a special study. The difference between the early and modern versions of the names of natural phenomena and their use in everyday life increases the importance of the topic of the article. In this regard, it seems appropriate to study the features of the use of paremia in oral speech in a comparative aspect. The semantic features of the names of natural phenomena, especially in a figurative sense, reflect the accumulated stock of knowledge in the centuries-old history of the people since the native speaker began to study and know himself in close relationship with the environment. The authors of the article aim to identify the linguistic mechanisms that indicate differences in their background knowledge by comparing and comparing proverbs and sayings of the Turkic peoples living in different regions with different climatic conditions. To achieve this goal, two tasks are set: to find and conduct a comparative analysis of the Kazakh equivalent of proverbs and sayings with the names of natural phenomena in the Turkish language, as well as to determine the final pragmatic intention of the speaker using the names of natural phenomena in direct and figurative meanings. In the course of the study, there were used methods of systematization, comparison, differentiation, and analysis of language data.

Language mechanisms of political campaigning among the youth in the 2019 presidential election in Ukraine

This article looks into the linguistic mechanisms designed to establish communication between the presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelens’kyi and the youth in the 2019 Ukrainian election campaign. The young voters, who are less familiar with the political, economic, and social processes in the country due to their age and little life experience are at risk of falling victim to political technologists. The article examines Zelens’kyi’s political projects on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tele-gram, and Viber channels, the Twitter page of his campaign stuff, and the personal Facebook page. Aside from technological techniques, the paper focuses on the discourse of the election campaign built by the technologists to win the favor of young voters. It examines a linguistic component of the election rhetoric of this particular political project and reconstructs the main messages addressed to the youth. A complex of special linguistic methods has been applied to the texts,e.g., content analysis, discourse analysis, and critical discourse analysis, which helps “to deci-pher” the ideological components. Successfully selected channels, practices, and methods of virtual communication, “cor-rect” messages, and manipulative methods of the language use of the election campaign waged by Zelens’kyi, e.g., the clash of two generations theme, were converted into the votes “in favour” for the previously inactive electoral group. Convergence tactics were used to adjust the language to the younger generation. These in-clude the use of vocabulary from the Internet and the latest technologies, borrowings, informal youth forms of address, slang forms, language games, graphic capabilities of electronic space, in particular hashtags, stickers, and emojis. Keywords: communication, social networking, targeting, Facebook, vulgarisms, slang.

A comprehensive cognitive-perceptual model of analysis for contextually determined components of a conceptualized term

The authors analyze major features of complex multidisciplinary analysis models of the recipient’s perceptual capacity related to desobjectifying contextually determined transdisciplinary borrowing of newly emerging components within a semantic hierarchy. Critical analysis and comparison are applied to some alternative approaches in linguistic studies of transdisciplinary terminologization. There is a role revealed, which belongs to the cognitive-perceptual aspect in the respective knowledge field. The comprehensive phenomenon of component transgression within the meaning hierarchy is viewed from different angles: metaphoric and metonymic explication, and from the stance of conceptual integration of mental spaces and grammatical constructions of implicit meaning generation. The semantic foundations of the frame & semantic model of the borrowing theory serve a prototype of a comprehensive analytical model relevant not only in Linguistics, yet in other humanities (Literature, Psychology, Sociology). The comprehensive method of bottom-up analysis in studying explication of contextually determined overtones (forced reinterpretation of terms and terminoids) implies desobjectification of the semantic hierarchy at several levels. The analysis suggests that standard linguistic mechanisms can be employed through deautomation in the said cognitive modeling function. Reactivating a prototypical mental image within a new reflexive space is viewed as the most effective way of explicating the respective components.

ПРЕЦЕДЕНТНЫЕ ЕДИНИЦЫ «ЗОЛОТОЕ РУНО», «АРГОНАВТЫ», «ЯСОН» В ТЕКСТАХ РУССКОЯЗЫЧНЫХ СМИ: СЕМАНТИКА И ОСОБЕННОСТИ ФУНКЦИОНИРОВАНИЯ

The article is devoted to the study of precedent units with the source «ancient Greek mythology», which have the potential to broadcast the linguistic and cultural features of a particular community, the recognition of which influences the success of intercultural communication. The work provides a comprehensive analysis of the precedent units included in the cycle «The History of the Golden Fleece», namely «Argonauts», «Golden Fleece», «Jason» in the texts of Russian-language media. In the article the author argues that the change in the semantics of constructions occurs not only at the denotative, but also at the connotative, pragmatic level, where the studied precedent units acquire new semantic features. The analysis of the functioning features of the precedent units included in the «History of the Golden Fleece» cycle allows us to establish the linguistic mechanisms of their «deployment» in the media discourse and come to the conclusion about the specifics of the fragment of the worldview, fixed in mythologized precedent phenomena.

HYPNOSTYLISTIC PATTERNS OF SUGGESTION IN HYPNOTIC DISCOURSE

Summary.The article investigates hypnotic discourse, i.e. the result of communication in a situation of hypnotherapeutic influence together with all (tangible and intangible) constituents of the communicative situation. When applying hypnosis, the hypnotherapist uses hypnotic speech, which is characterized by specific hypnostylistic patterns. The purpose of this article is to outline the linguistic features of the functioning of hypnostylistic suggestions in Chinese hypnotic discourse. The object of the study is hypnotic discourse in Chinese, and the subject is the mechanisms of hypnotic communicative act in Chinese. The materialis transcripts of speech recordings of hypnotherapists during hypnotic sessions in Chinese with a total volume of 50 hours. The following methods were used in the study: general scientific methods (induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, quantitative, etc.) to derive scientifically sound inferences; general linguistic methods (discourse analysis) for the analysis of the lingual components of hypnotic discourse; the author 's technique of hypnostylistic analysis is used to single out lingual patterns of hypnotic impact and suggestion. The main results of the study. A frequent group of linguistic patterns that lead to a change in beliefs are those that are based on changing the size of the perception frame. These include: decrease and increase (213 cases of decrease and 338 cases of increase were registered), scaling (used 130 times) and metaframe (used 73 times). Also, one of the groups of suggestions that lead to a change of beliefs are those that are axiological in nature, they include: self-application (used 104 times), reality strategy (used 240 times), hierarchy of criteria (used 189 times), and counterexample (used 357 times).The use of the analyzed suggestions during the hypnotic effect of a hypnotherapy session makes it possible to deepen the trance and, accordingly, to effectively correct the restrictive beliefs. Prospects for further research are seen in the comprehensive study of the linguistic mechanisms of hypnotic effects on the recipient on the material of Chinese and English.

Semantic Anglicisms in French Internet Forum

Semantic assimilation is a many-sided and a multidimensional phenomenon assuming a number of analysis approaches. The article is a study of the semantic borrowing process due to either graphical or phonetic identity of lexical units. It discusses general semantic transformations of the English language borrowings alongside with the examples of semantic anglicisms in the French Internet discourse. The global tendency is that the French language is daily receipting quite a number of English words the Internet discourse being one of the leading media. To specify the borrowing patterns in the French language at the semantic level the net forum genre is chosen as a specific combination of oral and written speech features giving a most outstanding and evident picture of all linguistic tendencies. The work is an attempt to define what a semantic anglicism is and what linguistic mechanisms are involved in the process when French lexemes undergo semantic transformations due to their either graphical or phonetic likeness to English ones. The research topicality is conditioned by the nature of the global Internet discourse itself the latter being the speech type abundant in all kinds of borrowings anglicisms in particular. The research background is the legal French policy to defend the national language and the French linguists struggle against anglicisms overwhelming penetration into French. The analysis is also held through experimental French native speakers interviewing for the excessive use of English words and its expediency. The research methods are structural-semantic, comparative, statistical. The units under study are English language semantic borrowings in the French internet forum held by native French language speakers.