STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC ADAPTATION OF ANGLO-AMERICANISMS IN SPANISH MASS MEDIA TOURISM DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article deals with the peculiarities of structural and semantic adaptations of anglo-americanisms in the Spanish language. It is noted that Spanish simplifi es the semantic structure of some anglo-americanisms during the process of lexical adaptation. Anglo-americanisms can adapt new meanings in the recipient language, which differ from the ones in the native language. The metonymic model, which is observed in our corpus of study, shows also the semantic development of the borrowings. For example, anglo-amer. wakeboard (a surface water sport) ← eng. wakeboard (a small, mostly rectangular, thin board with very little displacement and shoe bindings mounted to it). Spanish tourism discourse reveals that anglo-americanisms are actively used in travel magazines. The language of tourism possesses a “multi-dimensional” nature shaped according to the intended target. The understanding of the tourist text by target readers is guaranteed by decoding of the message which starts from an analysis of the semantic characteristics of its words. Within the language of tourism, borrowings occur more than in general language. This does not refl ect a natural language process but a purposeful and careful work of selection by travel journalists. Moreover, lexicographical fi xation of these borrowings falls behind their modern usage. We study the basic methods of anglo-americanism derivation in the modern Spanish language: prefi xal, suffi xal and prefi xal-suffi xal. The prefi xal-suffi xal method of word-formation, which allows the creation of new words by adding prefi xes before the base of a word and suffi xes after its base, is the least represented in the study of anglo-americanisms. For example: anglo-amer. enroquecido (adj) (a rock music fan) ← esp. en- + eng. rock + esp.-[ec]ido. The suffi xal word-formation is the most productive in the Spanish language. It forms nouns, adjectives and verbs. Spanish, as a traditionally purist language, does not accept all foreign models of the English language passively, but adapt them according to its language rules, creating sometimes new words as substitutes for anglo-americanisms.