The Anglicisation of word formations: cross-linguistic blends in Spanish: What do they tell us about the state of English as an international language?

Introduction

Whereas the influence of English in form of Anglicisms has attracted considerable attention, little has been written on how English is interacting with autochthonous word-formation processes in modern languages. The present paper attempts to shed some light on a phenomenon that has been very recently attested in Spanish: the coinage of blend words involving overlap and combination of material from both English and the recipient language (in this case Spanish). I argue that these ad hoc words give us important insights into the state and status of English in what Kachru (1982) called the 'Expanding Circle'.

Background

If Kachru's (1982) triadic classification is extrapolated and applied to the study of lexical blending as a word-formation mechanism whereby two (or more rarely three) words are merged together in English - as in brunch (breakfast + lunch) - it becomes apparent that previous research has concentrated on the 'Inner Circle', that is, the coinage of these words in the historical bases of the English-speaking world or 'Anglosphere'.

In this regard, no differences in terms of existing or new blends have been pointed out among varieties of English spoken in the 'Inner Circle'; 'Outer Circle', where English is not the autochthonous 'native' language but still plays a significant role; and the 'Expanding Circle', where this language is used as a means of international communication (Kachru, 1982). As Schneider (2007: 12-13) states, these three circles correlate with the traditional distinctions ENL ('English as a Native Language'), ESL ('English as a Second Language'), and EFL ('English as a Foreign Language'), which explains why the 'Inner Circle' countries still act as norm-providers for others not only in terms of grammar but also in almost any sphere of the language.

In this paper I discuss how the 'Expanding Circle' is developing idiosyncratic examples of cross-linguistic word-formations, in particular, blends. Blending is a deeply rooted word-formation mechanism in English and is also attested in other languages in which compounding and clipping are recurrent mechanisms to coin new lexis (Brdar-Szabo & Brdar, 2008). Proof of this is the fact that, despite its historically marginal role in traditional linguistic studies, blending increasingly continues to be 'an intentional and formally ingenious way of associating the semantics of two or more words in a...