Transferencia léxica de los anglicismos en la prensa santiaguera (1805-1902). Un estudio sociolinguístico histórico.

Date

2017-12

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Abstract

In the linguistic history of Cuba, the constant flood of diverse foreign cultures has brought with it the presence of different social and ethnic groups (Valdés Bernal, 2006). This mixture of cultures brought the insertion of new turns or phrases and foreign words, which became part of the lexical repertoire of what is now known as the variant of the Cuban Spanish.

In this research, it is presented the results of a diachronic sociohistorical linguistic study on lexical loans from English in the written press of Santiago de Cuba during the 19th century until 1902. The objective of this study is to describe the linguistic behavior of nineteenth-century Anglicisms in the variant of the Cuban Spanish. The methodology consisted in a random sampling of the Santiago de Cuba newspapers published from 1805 to 1902.

An inventory of the 262 Anglicisms found was made and then analyzed in two different stages according to their frequency of use, typology, their adaptation to the recipient language and lexical fields in which they were located. In the results, it was highlighted that the predominant type of Anglicisms in this long period were the ones that kept their English spelling. The lexical fields that more anglicisms contributed were commerce, politics and sport. The highest percentage of Anglicisms found were classified as foreign loanwords in transfer to Spanish.

In the second phase of the study, the degrees of lexical vitality of some Anglicisms found in the nineteenth century were determined through the answers of a lexical association questionnaire. The retention of full lexical vitality in most of terms imported from English was confirmed. The historical sociolinguistic study, despite presenting great challenges for the researcher, allowed to keep track of the evolution and changes in the linguistic system, in particular of the lexicon, in past times, which resulted into a better understanding and location of the variant of the Cuban Spanish.

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Keywords

Anglicisms, Sociolinguistics, Lexical transference, Lexicons, Newspapers

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