35.2477, Review: Borrowings in Informal American English: Kowalczyk (2023)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-35-2477. Wed Sep 11 2024. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 35.2477, Review: Borrowings in Informal American English: Kowalczyk (2023)

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Date: 11-Sep-2024
From: Tyler Anderson [tanderso at coloradomesa.edu]
Subject: Semantics: Kowalczyk (2023)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35.93

AUTHOR: Małgorzata Kowalczyk
TITLE: Borrowings in Informal American English
SUBTITLE: Studies in English Language
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Tyler Anderson

SUMMARY

Małgorzata Kowalczyk’s book Borrowings in Informal American English
aims to disabuse readers of the idea that lexical borrowings in this
environment is marginal or negligible, proving that such language
contact manifestations are abundant in the informal realm. As part of
the evidence, the author provides a glossary of some 1200 entries. In
addition to the glossary, the book contains 7 chapters, plus an
introduction and a conclusion.

Chapter 1 sets the stage of the book, including discussing the general
foundations of the scholarly background related to lexical borrowings
and informal language. Herein, the author looks at the state of the
research in these areas as well as presenting the main research
methodologies involved in this project. In this chapter she shows how
lexical borrowings are generally excluded from discussions on informal
language, and conversely that informal language is generally
nonexistent in discussions of lexical borrowings. The material used to
gather samples of informal language is comprised of “specialized
sources with a sizable amount of informal borrowings” (p. 12), and
include TV series (e.g. Seinfeld), film (e.g., Price Above Rubies),
newspaper articles from select publications (e.g., Miami New Times)
and web pages. Additionally, conversations with minority students at
two US universities augment the data. These sources were selected to
provide natural and informal instances of language use. In total, the
author uses over 1700 different sources, which involved hundreds of
hours of analysis. These sources yielded over 12,000 citations that
include informal lexical borrowings, which are not limited to
loanwords, but also include loan translations, semantic loans, and
loan blends. The principal goal of this book is descriptive in nature:
therefore the author’s main questions center around defining informal
borrowings, determining what language they come from, how they are
formed and modified, and why they are used. Each of these questions is
addressed in subsequent chapters.

Chapter 2 centers around defining key terms, such as borrowings and
informal language.  In the description of borrowings, loanwords, loan
translations and semantic loans are each defined and exemplified. The
author also provides two sections on related terms, one specifically
devoted to code-switching. Turning to the definition of informal,
after summarizing several scales of formality, Kowalczyk delves into
terms such as colloquialisms and slang. As with lexical borrowings,
she ends the chapter by looking at related and additional terms,
including jargon, argot, taboo and euphemisms, among many others.

Chapter 3 delves into the world of borrowings by language origin.
After discussing the complicated task of identifying the origin of
borrowings, the author separates out several languages that have
greatly influenced lexical borrowings in informal American English.
Not surprisingly, the major contributors include Spanish and Yiddish,
followed by German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and Dutch; Kowalczyk
provides specific examples from her corpus of each of these donors.

The subsequent chapter sets out to provide a typological
classification of the borrowings. In this chapter Kowalczyk provides a
classification by borrowed materials (e.g., loanwords vs. loan
translations), by parts of speech, by degree of assimilation, by
modification, by frequency, and by impact (i.e., shock effect).
Chapter 5 turns to the adaptations that these lexical borrowings have
experienced when acquired by the receptive language. These changes
include phonological, orthographical, morphological, semantic,
grammatical, and stylistic (i.e., register) alterations.

The author then turns in Chapter 6 to the functions that the
borrowings serve. Here we are introduced to the idea of referential
function, which is defined as the function to simply name things,
actions or qualities, the most fundamental function of language.
Included in this section is the idea of enriching borrowings, or those
borrowings which bring novelty to the lexicon. The chapter then turns
to the idea of social function (i.e., language used to convey social
identity), psychological function (i.e., the expression of emotion),
rhetorical function (i.e., language used for stylistic effects), and
cultural function (i.e., the evidence of cultural contact between
languages).

In Chapter 7, the author presents the thematic categories of lexical
borrowings. Here she explains the semantic fields where the borrowings
are found. She breaks these down into three categories: Core,
Cultural-Specific, and Miscellaneous. The core fields include, among
others, the human body, sexuality, and drugs, which the author notes
are all social taboos in the mainstream culture of America. The
cultural-specific borrowings come from topics that are of importance
to a particular cultural group, such as names that refer to
minorities, the minority experience and linguistic diversity. The
final category, Miscellaneous, includes items such as the body and its
functions, people and society, time, and location. Each of these
sections provides an ample number of examples to help explain the
concepts. The book concludes with a concise summary of the tome, and
introduces the glossary, which constitutes roughly the second half of
the book.

EVALUATION

Małgorzata Kowalczyk’s book Borrowings in Informal American English is
a welcome addition to the field of lexical borrowings. From the
beginning, it was apparent that this book was intentional,
meticulously researched, and professionally written for both experts
and non-experts alike. The chapters are deep enough for specialists in
language contact yet written in such a way that those with minimal
exposure to the field will benefit from the reading. The author gives
precise definitions and illustrations of potentially complex terms and
concepts to aid the reader in engaging in the text. The examples the
author uses throughout are beneficial to shedding light on the notions
at hand. As noted by the author, the main aim for the book is
functional—showing the proliferation of borrowings in informal
American English—and not theoretical.

In the introduction the author clearly defines the scope of the book
and succeeds in reaching these aims throughout. Regarding the main
questions, Kowalczyk adeptly defines informal borrowings, describes in
detail the languages that have contributed to the American English
lexicon, illustrates how these borrowings have been formed and
modified, and explains their linguistic functions.

An exemplary chapter is Chapter 5 on changes that have taken place
when a word is borrowed from one language to another. The author
skillfully organizes the chapter, provides ample examples, and
explains each concept. For instance, after discussing how borrowings
can be adapted orthographically to the English system, she provides
specific words in their context, together with the term’s definition,
the year it was said and a gloss to the source. To give an example, we
are provided with the following: “I’m watching the people ‘sashay’ [ =
walk in a casual way (from the French “chassé”)] (Treme, HBO-TV
series, 2010)” (p. 82).

>From the introduction to the conclusion, each chapter flows
seamlessly. While building on previous chapters, each chapter is
written in such a way that it could stand alone as an introduction to
the topics at hand. And the 1200-word glossary could easily serve as a
stand-alone dictionary on lexical borrowings in informal US English.

The research that went into the book is praiseworthy. The collection
of over 1700 sources, including conversations with students at several
US universities, television series, movies, internet, and press, in
and of itself is impressive. Add to that the need to comb through
these sources to find potential candidates for borrowings from donor
languages, and subsequently the need to research the etymology of each
borrowing, and you necessarily have a labor of love. Nonetheless,
there are some potential weaknesses in the methods that the author
uses to select the sources. She states that her goal is to find
sources that are ‘nationwide’ and ‘mainstream’ (p. 14) as well as make
sure that these sources are ‘natural’ and ‘informal’ (p. 2, 13).
However, many of her sources fail to hit at least one of these
criteria. Randomly selecting a source, one finds Marijuana Magazine
(p. 314); while perhaps natural and informal, it would not be
considered nationwide or mainstream. On the other extreme, U.S. News
and World Report may check the boxes of nationwide and mainstream but
may not be considered natural or informal. It is unclear how the
research team determined what would be included or excluded from the
data set. Likewise, the author states that to assure currency, “the
majority of sources are less than a decade old (p. 12);” however, of
the first 40 sources in the subcategory of ‘film’ (the only one that
gives dates) only one source fits that criterion. If this criterion is
important, it is unclear as to why sources of more than four decades
were still included.

Similarly, the author states that “representativeness was another
notable criterion for inclusion in the study. To all intents and
purposes, informal borrowings had to be either commonly known and used
by the majority of Americans or typically identified and highly
popular with minorities whose languages served as the basis for these
expressions” (p. 12). However, it was never explained how this
standard was met. Were the borrowings presented to Americans across
the United States to determine inclusion? Or was this purely assumed
by the part of the research team?

In a similar vein, the sheer numbers produced from the research are
astounding. Over 12,000 citations that included informal borrowings
were collected for their original database. However, when presenting
these numbers throughout the text, only rough approximations were
provided, many of which do not add up. For instance, when presenting
the types of borrowed materials, the author breaks these down into the
following categories with general proportions for said categories:
loanwords, which constitute “over two-thirds of all the expressions
found in the database” (p. 61); loan blends, constituting one-third of
all expressions; loan translations, at an additional 50 expressions,
and semantic borrowings also contribute, although they are “rather
marginal” (p. 63). A similar pattern is seen when the author presents
the notion of frequent borrowings (p. 72-74), where the subcategories
again add up to more than the whole. While this is not a study that
relies on statistics, it would be beneficial to provide exact numbers
with precise percentages, ones that truly would not add up to over one
hundred percent of the database.

While the presentation of examples generally aids in illustrating the
concepts at hand, several shortcomings merit discussion. Firstly, in
the discussion of phonological adaptations of the loanwords, the
author fails to fully illustrate the changes that have taken place.
This could have been accomplished by including a phonetic
transcription of the donor word, including the original word stress,
followed by the transcription of the pronunciation in its borrowed
state, highlighting the changes that have taken place. Secondly, the
original meaning of words would show how the donor form has evolved to
fit the English language. For instance, when discussing borrowings
that have changed their meaning, the author provides several examples,
but we don’t know what changes have taken place. It is obvious that
the example of “desperados” did not originally mean “degenerate
gamblers,” but it is unclear what the original meaning was (p. 72).
Other examples could use additional clarification along these same
lines, such as in chapter 5 where the author presents more semantic
changes. For example, she states that the word “chutzpah” has
undergone semantic elevation but fails to show what the original
meaning of the word was to indicate that indeed this has received an
ameliorated sense.

These few shortcomings aside, Kowalczyk has provided a wonderful text
that is pioneer in the fields of lexical borrowing and informal
English. The extent of the research is impressive, the examples are
extensive, and the analysis is beneficial. It makes a welcome
inclusion to the library of all those interested in either of the
topics at hand.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Tyler K. Anderson is Professor of Spanish at Colorado Mesa University,
where he teaches courses in language, linguistics and second language
acquisition. His research interests include language attitudes toward
manifestations of contact linguistics, including the acceptability of
lexical borrowing and code-switching in Spanish and English contact
situations. He is currently researching the perceptions of phonetic
interference in second language acquisition and frequency of
Spanish-origin loanwords in English.



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