C. Cecilia Tocaimaza-Hatch and Dr. Robert Smead, Spanish and Portuguese
Background
Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, has distinguished itself from the rest of the Argentine cities by being the site of foreign influences throughout its history as an immigrants’ city. In particular, the presence of an English influence in Buenos Aires is well established, but has been historically a strictly British English influence due to immigration from Great Britain and subsequent economic and political involvement taking place in the 19th century. For that reason, anglicisms in Argentine Spanish have in the past been mostly remnants of British influence.
With the phenomenon of globalization spurred on by North American commercialism, the presence of modern anglicisms seems to be more prevalent than ever. Time has changed and in this information age American English has exerted pressure on the Spanish of Buenos Aires in more ways, and among a greater portion of the population, than British English has in the past. Indeed, American English has influenced even the way common Argentines speak in this, the most southern country of South America.
Need for research and sources
The most current study done on anglicisms in Argentine Spanish was conducted in 1987, but was limited to sports terminology. My first step was to explore what other areas needed documenting. After evaluating English borrowings used in broadcasts by two radio stations in Buenos Aires, one on the AM band (‘Radio Mitre’, genre: news, talk shows), the other on the FM band (‘Mega’, genre: popular music) I was able to observe the borrowings used, and the subjects they apply to. Also, as part of this primary research in the media, I evaluated the language used in the articles and advertisements in the two largest national newspapers, ‘Clarín’ and ‘La Nación’, both published in Buenos Aires.
Scope and procedure
For the period of four months, I listened daily to several hours of programming on the radio, and browsed the articles and advertisements of these newspapers documenting when and where I observed any English borrowing. One of my first impressions was that there were many borrowings used quite freely in entertainment contexts, and so I decided to limit my research to this area.
In order to find out the extent of the influence of English borrowings on the general population, I organized a list of words that appeared repeatedly in the entertainment section of the media, and put them together as part of a survey that was completed by 24 participants, 11 women and 13 men, all residents of greater Buenos Aires. The participants were divided into two age groups: 16 to 30 years old, and 31 to 45. Fourteen people were part of the first group (16-30 years old), and 10 were part of the second group (31-45 years old). Two participants were high school students, while the others were current university students or graduates. Concerning social status, the groups were homogeneous since everyone in the sample belongs to the middle class.
The words collected in the radio, and in the press, widely used in the entertainment section are the following: antifrizz [sic], boom, casting, country, fans, fashion, film, full, look, performance, rating, realitys [sic], remake, and spa. These true anglicisms I have studied have suffered little or no morphological adaptation, meaning that they appear in the Argentine press written (in most cases) just as they would in any English newspaper. The adaptations some of them have suffered are related to incorrect plural formation, as in the case of ‘realitys’, and some phonetic adaptation as in the word ‘antifrizz’ (hairstyling product). Just when and how much phonetic adaptation people actually do to fit their first language is an area still in need of research, for which it would be useful to create an oral corpus.
Results
Concerning the attitude of acceptance of anglicisms, the results of my survey presented the following: When the participants were asked if they had ever heard these words, 96% of the all participants indicated that they had heard the words used. In the 16-30 years old group 93% indicated that they knew the meaning of those words, in the 31-45 years old group 90% indicated knowing their meaning. When split by gender, men indicated that they know 100% of the words, while women indicated knowing 82% of them. When asked if they would use these words themselves in conversation, men indicated approval by 77% and women only 37%. Those who responded negatively to the previous question indicated that they would not use any anglicisms because they don’t know how to speak English, or because they don’t care for the language. Those that indicated that they would use them indicated they would do so only orally.
When the participants were presented with five Spanish sentences where anglicisms were included, 85% of the men and 82% of the women indicated that the sentences were correct as given. As a conclusion concerning attitude, we can say that there is a very favorable attitude towards the use of anglicisms in both age groups, as well as in both gender groups. Women, however, showed themselves as more careful with the use of anglicisms, while men are open to their use and accept them as correct language use.
In the last section of the survey, participants were asked to match the words to their definitions. One column listed the words, and another column listed possible definitions. In this second column there were two possible definitions given for ‘country’, both valid: the first one being ‘private neighborhood’ and the second one ‘rural area’, thus creating more definitions than words. Significantly, 100% of the participants matched the word ‘country’ with ‘private neighborhood,’ and among this percentage 67% marked also ‘rural area’ as a definition for ‘country’. As we can see, anglicisms are not only adapted morphologically in the language, but they also obtain new meanings, thus requiring more research in the area of semantics.
Anglicisms are constantly being incorporated into Argentine Spanish. They are accepted by the population and spreading by means of phonetic, morphological, and semantic adaptations. They are not only part of sports jargon but they are starting to be incorporated into other fields, such as entertainment, as seen in this research. Other areas, such as the ones related to economics, and politics are still left to study.