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.