Peculiarities of Functioning of Macaronisms in the Light of Language Integration (on the Example of German Publicistic Texts)

Seregina Marina Aleksandrovna ORCID: 0000-0003-0573-644X PhD in Pedagogy Associate professor, Department of German Philology, Southern Federal University 344064, Russia, Rostov region, Rostov-On-Don, 2nd five-year plan str., 8, sq. 7 m.seregina@rambler.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Various changes in society strongly affect the main means of our communication – language. The changes relate to all linguistic aspects, but they are mainly reflected in the vocabulary. The German language was no exception and throughout its development also underwent changes in its lexical composition, where borrowed words appeared more and more actively. English is of great importance for modern realities, so today it is from this language that words are most often borrowed. Language is a mobile system that undergoes changes under the influence of fashion trends. For this reason, the appearance of Anglicisms in speech is still an acute topic for many researchers, since borrowings directly affect the development of the language. The relevance of the research is due to the need to study the processes of assimilation in Anglicisms, as a result of which such linguistic objects as macaronisms, hybrid borrowings, actively used by representatives of the German linguistic and cultural community in oral and written speech, in conversational situations and professional activities appear ^[1].

In this regard, it is important to consider the characteristic features of the functioning of hybrid Anglicisms in the German print media in word-formation, grammatical-morphological and thematic-conceptual aspects.

Research methods and materials

The main research methods used were contextual analysis, descriptive method and classification method in the typologization of foreign language borrowings. The method of structural and semantic analysis was used to study lexical units in the issues of the journal. The method of component analysis is used in the work to study individual morphemes of card file units, and the method of quantitative analysis is used to establish the ratio within the borrowed material.

The research material was the texts of articles published in the German-language magazine and the Internet portal "Der Spiegel" in the period 2022-2023. [Der Spiegel URL: https://www.spiegel.de /]. Of these, Anglicisms were identified as factual material by a continuous sampling method, which made up the research file.

It is no coincidence that journalistic texts have become the material of our research, as they are the clearest examples of language integration. The specificity of the language of media and advertising texts lies in simplicity and conciseness, which attract the attention of readers and influence them with the help of a compact and understandable presentation of thoughts on acute topics of a social and socio-political nature ^{[2, p. 218]}.  Scientists identify different reasons for Anglo-American borrowings in the German language ^{[3, p. 17]}. English words are shorter, more concise in spelling and easier to pronounce than German ones (cf., eng. cool – German ausgezeichnet or eng. Teamwork – German. Gruppenzusammenarbeit), therefore, in a German newspaper, magazine or print advertisement, you can often see the use of a borrowed word, rather than native German. The next reason is due to the lack of German equivalents for some special concepts or names (e.g., die Jeans). Fashion trends and linguistic snobbery force young people to use Anglicisms in their colloquial speech (English chill – German chillen). To use a synonym, Anglicism is used, for example, das Ticket instead of die Fahrkarte.

The popularization of the English language has a strong geopolitical significance today, therefore, with the help of Anglicisms, it is possible to evoke certain associations in the mind of readers, which is a plus for attracting the attention of the audience. The use of Anglicisms is a marketing ploy. Marketers are trying to follow the fashion trends that are taking place in the world, and the number of borrowed words in the speech of German-speaking speakers is growing every year.

I would also like to note the active long-term trend of popularization of Anglo-American borrowings in modern media and advertising, since thanks to the process of globalization, the information flow has significantly expanded, destroying old lexical connections in exchange for new ones. The process of mastering Anglo-American borrowings is happening so rapidly that now many German-speaking people do not think about the active use of borrowed vocabulary in their oral and written speech, since it is perceived as native German ^{[4, S. 98]}. For example, the verb "zappen" is translated from German as "switch (channels)", and it is based on the English interjection "zap", which has the semantics of speed of action ^{[3, p. 17]}. Slogans are an important part of the advertising text, where hybrid borrowed vocabulary has also found its spread. «Bleib cool. Trink Nestea": this is how the advertising slogan of the company "Nestea" sounds in Germany. The mixing of English and German, which linguists call such a term as Denglisch, is a characteristic phenomenon in the language of the journalistic style ("Live mit dir") ^{[5, p. 34]}. There is even an online resource that keeps records of German slogans and determines their rating [Slogans.de URL: https://www.slogans.de /]. Some of them are entirely in English ("Find your soulbike").

Of course, the reasons for the active introduction of Anglo-American borrowings in the German media are related to their functions, which include, according to L. M. Shatilova, the effect of novelty, expression of variation, transfer of color, saving linguistic resources, pragmatic and communicative value, attracting the attention of the addressee ^{[6, p. 175]}. In most cases, it is almost impossible to unambiguously define the functions that Anglicisms perform in journalistic texts. In such situations, it is customary to talk about a certain dominant motive for using borrowed vocabulary ^{[7, p. 51]}.

Discussion

Both domestic and foreign linguists study borrowings and the specifics of their functioning in media discourse: M. V. Abakumova, T. I. Volkova, Yu. N. Denisova, S. A. Zhilyuk, N. A. Karpova, E. V. Korneva, N. A. Krashennikova, N. H. Mikhalk, O. N. Morozova, L. A. Nefedova, N. I. Nos, M. S. Omelchenko, K. A. Pugina, E. V. Rosen, A. A. Khromykh, A. Y. Shilintsev, T. I. Shchelok, H. S. Bhaskar, H. De Smet, H. Hilmisdottir, M. Huhtamaki, S. Karlsson, S. Knospe, R. Muhr, B. Kettemann, F. Rodriguez Gonzalez, S. J. Schaefer, M. Schroeter, M. Shaw, J. Treffers-Daller, etc.

Their works served as the theoretical basis for this study, as they consider aspects of the lexicology of the German language, reflecting not only the possibilities of expanding its lexical composition ^{[8, 9]}, but also the issues of their different types of assimilation ^[10], dynamic processes in vocabulary ^[11], changes at the word-formation level ^{[12, 13]}, the pragmatic potential of the functioning of borrowings ^{[14, 15]}, including in media texts ^[16], patterns and trends in the processes of borrowing different types of foreign words not only into German, but also into other groups of languages ^{[17, 3, 18, 19]}, as well as the features of the functioning of such a a linguistic phenomenon like "Denglisch" ^{[20, 21, 5,]}.

According to the DWDS German digital dictionary, Anglicism is a linguistic expression borrowed from English into another language (word, base, word—formation element), the origin of which can still be identified by certain linguistic characteristics (for example, pronunciation, combination of sounds and letters, spelling) [Digitales W?rterbuch URL: https://www.dwds.de /]. Referring to the DUDEN electronic dictionary, the vocabulary of the German language ranges from 300,000 to 500,000 words. While the number of borrowed words exceeds 100,000. Of the 12,000–16,000 words that a native speaker uses on average, 3,500 words are foreign [Duden W?rterbuch URL: https://www.duden.de /]. These statistics indicate the active use of borrowed words by native speakers in their daily speech.

There is no sphere in everyday life where Anglicisms are not used: media, advertising, film industry, fashion, technology, science, politics, sports, youth slang, etc. What is the reason for this? As mentioned earlier, this is due to many reasons: various historical and geopolitical events, the rapid process of globalization, the expansion of trade and economic relations, changes in all spheres of society, the cultural influence of other peoples, interest in learning a foreign language, etc.

Anglicisms in German, in turn, began to spread from the second half of the 20th century due to the dominance of the economic and technological development of Great Britain and the United States over Germany and other countries ^{[4, S. 9]}. It is also worth noting that the process of the appearance of borrowings in any language is natural. The lexical composition has been constantly influenced by language contacts with other cultures since ancient times. For example, the dominance of the Latin language over time can be seen in such lexemes as Latin. saccus is German. Sack; lat. fenestra – German. Fenster. The English language has the same international importance now. Languages are not separated from each other, but due to the constant intercultural communication caused by the processes of globalization and urbanization, they are enriched, so the vocabulary of any language consists not only of native words, but also of borrowed and foreign languages.

According to the classification of borrowings, it is customary to distinguish the following groups of Anglicisms ^{[21, p. 98]}: direct borrowings (das Interview, der Teenager); terminological synonyms (marketing – die Massnahmen eines Unternehmens); mixed formations (Powerfrau – die Gesch ? ftsfrau; der Backshop); verbs transformed according to German grammar (surfen); pseudo-anglicisms (das Handy, der Dressman).

Getting into another language system, borrowings are assimilated, i.e. they adapt to the system of the recipient language in phonetic, grammatical, semantic and graphical terms. Thus, according to T.I. Volkova, there are such trends in the orthoepic and graphic aspects of assimilation as the reduction of the phonetic appearance of foreign-language units, the preservation of their sound appearance, and the change in the spelling of the word ^{[17, p. 77]}.

In this regard, it is also worth mentioning three types of mastering Anglo-American borrowings, among which there are ^{[5, p. 36]}: 1) undeveloped Anglicisms with zero assimilation (they are preserved in the form in which they function in their native language) – das Baby; 2) partially mastered Anglicisms with phonetic and grammatical assimilation (they are endowed with some grammatical categories, for example, inflection in verbs) – googeln; 3) mastered Anglicisms with complete or lexico-semantic assimilation (they are included in word-formation processes) – mitsurfen.

T. I. Shchelok came to an indicative conclusion in his research as a result of the analysis of borrowed vocabulary based on the material of German-language magazines. The majority of borrowings are in the noun class – 84.9%. The classes of adjectives and verbs make up significantly fewer Anglicisms – 7% and 5.93%. Next come adverbs, prepositions and particles – 1.53%, 0.54% and 0.28%, respectively ^{[2, p. 218]}.

Some borrowings are successfully assimilated into another language, while others, on the contrary, are insufficiently mastered. Then we are talking about "foreign language inclusions". For the first time, the concept of "foreign language inclusions" in a broad sense was introduced by A. A. Leontiev. Further, this term was developed in their writings by such researchers as S. I. Vlakhov, L. P. Krysin, S. I. Manina, S. P. Florin, etc.

Due to the terminological variability, loanwords are also defined as macaronisms. Macaronisms are initially understood, on the one hand, words or expressions of folk speech (French, Italian) that have penetrated into the written literary Latin language, and on the other hand, foreign words or expressions used in speech in the form in which they exist in the source language (while preserving their grammatical and pronunciation features) [Large explanatory Dictionary URL: http://gramota.ru/slovari/info/bts /].

Such a phenomenon as "macaronism" originated in ancient times and was used to create a comic effect, for example, in literature. Now it is also considered that this is one of the main functions of this concept. But others are also distinguished ^{[22, p. 21]}: nominative, aesthetic, aggressive demonstration of language competence. There are also "internal" macaronisms — complex hybrid words formed from the roots of different languages (car from Greek — Latin mobilis). But macaronism in general refers specifically to the mixing of languages, i.e. their hybridization.

When people talk about the mixing of languages, they often mean such a linguistic phenomenon as "Denglisch" (Deutsch + Englisch). Denglisch is a mixture of German and English, when a large number of Anglicisms are present in German speech. Some scientists even call it a new language ^{[20, p. 189; 21, p. 98; 5, p. 35]}.

At the moment, such a linguistic phenomenon has become commonplace for the German-speaking population. But not all native speakers and linguists are positive about its appearance, as national identity is being lost due to the large number of Anglicisms in speech that affect the language at all its levels. To combat the introduction of loanwords into the German language, the association "Verein Deutsche Sprache" or VDS was even created in 1997, which actively defends its identity and opposes Denglish. This association has 36,000 members and is the world's largest linguistic and cultural association with its headquarters in Dortmund.

When a borrowed word enters a language, it goes through a process of linguistic and cultural adaptation, as it undergoes changes at all linguistic levels: phonetic, morphemic, morphological, semantic. The use of Anglicisms in speech raises many questions among linguists precisely from the point of view of the grammatical aspect. How do I conjugate a borrowed verb correctly? How to decline a noun? What kind of Anglicism should I use? The last question is particularly acute, since some foreign words with different articles have dissimilar meanings. His research was carried out by such linguists as G. Aron, N. Zindler, B. Carstensen, M. S. Omelchenko et al., who distinguish three categories of Anglicisms according to their grammatical gender ^{[13, p. 113]}:

· Anglicisms that can have all three genders (der/das/die Dress);

· Anglicisms that can have only two genders (der/das Lanch);

· Anglicisms that can have only one gender (der Job).

Also in her research, K. A. Pugina identified the types of analogy according to which a grammatical gender is assigned to a noun ^{[1, p. 234]}:

· by the kind of its lexical correspondence (Russian manager – M.R./ German. der Manager, J.R./ German die Managerin);

· in accordance with certain suffixes (the suffixes -ness, -ty, -ion are characterized by the feminine gender – die Fitness; Anglicisms with the suffix -er belong to the masculine gender – der Designer; the suffixes -ing and -ment correspond to the neuter gender – das Streaming).

There are also often questions that relate to the spelling of words, because the rules in English and German are different. In addition, it is not completely clear how to pronounce some sounds that are not in the German language, for example, it sounds like a deaf dsch ^{[23, p. 43]}. Many Anglicisms sound according to the rules of English phonetics, which is why some researchers are clearly concerned, because the language is becoming less distinctive in all aspects.  Nevertheless, native speakers still try to adapt the sound of Anglicisms to German pronunciation norms. For example, Poster- pronounced with a long or short "o" along with English [pouster] [ibid., p. 40]. When receiving the infinitive ending -(e)n or adding a German prefix, Anglicized verbs undergo grammatical assimilation: gelockdownt.

The next difficulty in mastering Anglicisms is due to the fact that a word that sounds and is written the same in German and in English can have completely different meanings (cf. handy – dexterous; German. das Handy – mobile/cell phone). This may confuse language learners, not native speakers. For example: "Handy-Tarifvergleich.de hilft Ihnen bei der Suche nach den g?nstigsten und individuell besten Handytarifen aller Mobilfunkanbieter in Deutschland!".

Anglicism can develop in German a meaning that is not present in the native (English) language. This process can be traced by the example of the English word slip in the meaning of "swimming trunks", which, when translated into German, acquires the meaning of "underpants" (as an item of underwear).

Results

Thus, within the framework of this study, the texts of articles published in the German-language magazine and the Internet portal Der Spiegel in the period 2022-2023 were analyzed. Using a continuous sampling method, examples of the use of macaronisms of Anglo-American origin were identified to identify the features of their contextual functioning in word-formation, grammatical-morphological and thematic-conceptual aspects.

Der Spiegel magazine did not accidentally become the material of our research, as it is one of the most popular periodicals in Germany, with an information and political orientation.  Sales amount to about 1.1 million copies per week. The publishing house covers the main news in the field of politics, business, sports, culture, science, technology and other spheres of public life.

As for the word–formation models of the formation of borrowings from the research file, five groups were identified according to the method of their formation: direct borrowings – 50% of the research file, mixed – 22%, transformed – 14%, terminological - 10% and pseudo-anglicisms – 4%.

Thus, a group of direct borrowings is characterized by the fact that the word itself retains the form in which it exists in its native language. At the same time, it can acquire the category of German grammar or a feature of the phonetic structure of this language, such as: das Team; der Star; der Coach; das Camp; der Job; das Laptop; der Small Talk; das Single; negativ; positiv, etc.

Most often, it is difficult to find an equivalent for direct borrowings, since they are much more complicated and longer than an English word, so it is easier to use Anglicism in everyday life.

Mixed loanwords are words that form complex compounds. For example, where one part of the word comes from English and the other from German: der Baubot; der Chatteilnehmer; die Ex-Frau; die Chatnachricht, etc.

Transformed loanwords are loanwords (more often verbs) that acquire the ending of German verbs, that is, –en/-n, such as: i nterviewen; packen; surfen; checken; googeln.

Terminological borrowings include various general concepts and terms, such as: der Bitcoin; die Hardware; die Software, etc.

The smallest group is pseudoanglicisms – words that do not coincide in meaning in English and German, such as: "handy" in the meaning of "convenient; the one that is at hand" and the German word "das Handy" ("mobile phone").

As the statistical analysis of the research file showed, Anglicisms that are fully used in their original form in the recipient language have become the most widespread, since they are firmly embedded in the spoken language of native speakers and it is difficult to come up with / find a German match for them. On the contrary, Anglo-American borrowings, which have changed their semantic meaning, are least used in speech.

Borrowed words, falling into another language, are most often subjected to assimilation, which is associated with the grammatical and spelling rules of the German language, therefore, Anglicisms with grammatical and phonetic assimilation are more common than others. This is especially true for nouns or verbs, because they are endowed with certain correspondences from the German language. For example, borrowed nouns acquire gender, are capitalized and inclined: der Beat; der Track. There are interesting examples in the research file when the English letter -c- is replaced by -k-, and -ss - by --. In one of the articles of the magazine, a word with a German version of its spelling was encountered – der Klub. Although now its other variant is also found everywhere, through the initial letter -c- (der Club). Also the English word business, in the edition it is written in accordance with the rules with a capital letter and the double letters -ss- are replaced by –: das Busine. It should also be mentioned about cases of partial assimilation, when words have not been completely assimilated to German spelling and the word is written with a hyphen: die Ex-Frau. As for borrowed verbs, they acquire inflections, three main verb forms and change according to the conjugation rules of the German language, such as the verb chatten: chatten – chattete – hat gechattet; ich chatte; du chattest; er chattet; wir chatten; ihr chattet; sie chatten.

Complete assimilation is not as common as the previous two types. There are no such examples in the sample from Der Spiegel magazine for 2022-2023. But in this case, we mean words that are not modified in any way and are not subject to the rules of another language. Often such an example can be seen in advertisements or slogans: Just do it.

German linguists R. Moore and B. Kettemann conducted a study, including on the material of German magazines and newspapers. They identified the areas where the greatest prevalence of Anglo-American borrowings was observed. These include economics, politics, sports, technology, fashion, and tourism ^[4]. During our research, all the borrowings of the card file were systematized into five thematic groups: culture (35%), sports (23%), economics (15%), public life (14%), science (13%). The grouping criteria are related to the sections of the journal in whose articles these borrowings were used.

The thematic group "Culture" includes such areas as music, art, social life, therefore, Anglicisms in this group are the most: der Rapper; der Beat; der Social-Media-Manager, der Beauty-Wahn, das Open Air Konzert, hot-rot, beatgelb. The thematic group "Sport" is represented by concepts that are world-famous and actively used in everyday speech: das Team; der Fan; das Match; der Klub. The public sphere is connected with the conditions of the globalization process. New concepts are emerging for phenomena that are now emerging in connection with the expansion of information flows from the global Internet: der IT-Berater, der Chat; der Talkshow-Star; posten. In the thematic groups "Economics" and "Science" there are borrowed terms: der Knochenjob, das Traumteam, der Handliner; der Start-up; der Baubot; digital; die Software. Thus, the process of the appearance of Anglicisms in another language now affects different spheres of human activity, but as for journalistic texts, they are most actively used in magazine articles about culture and sports.

Conclusion

Thus, the use of borrowings in speech has both positive and negative sides. On the one hand, they significantly increase the vocabulary and enrich the lexicon, but on the other hand, the language loses its national and cultural identity, ceases to be unique. Due to constant intercultural contacts, Anglicisms have a huge impact on all spheres of life of German-speaking speakers, they spread rapidly, but are especially actively used in the media and advertising, because it is journalistic texts that are characterized by the introduction of new vocabulary. Based on the conducted research, it can be argued that the process of borrowing vocabulary into another language is accompanied by different ways of assimilation, namely, the assimilation of word-formation models and grammatical rules of the new language system: nouns receive a gender category, often retain the English plural form and are written with a capital letter; verbs acquire endings and have the ability to conjugate, and adjectives incline in according to the three types of declension, or remain unchanged. The vocabulary borrowed from the English language has its wide distribution in various spheres of life: from sports to economics. In the future, it seems promising to study the functioning of macaronisms in German and other foreign languages in comparative aspects at different language levels.