GLOBALIZATION OF ENGLISH AND ITS INFLUENCE ON RUSSIAN
Авторы: Шохолова Дарья и Скитецкая Вероника, ученицы 11 «М» класса Научный руководитель: Алексеенко Оксана Анатольевна,
учитель английского языка
МАОУ Домодедовская средняя общеобразовательная школа №4 с углубленным изучением отдельных предметов
Today English occupies a special position and it is becoming the "lingua Franca" - the language of interethnic communication of all mankind. The original English language became widespread all over the world in connection with the expansion of influence and colonial conquests of the British Empire.
The world around us changes rapidly. The language existing in the changing world must also change. If it doesn't happen, we won't be able to describe new objects and the phenomena. However, the new technologies, new political and economic realities appear and therefore languages need to borrow foreign words for new things. Emergence of new words or new meanings of old words means that something new in the world has appeared, or something existing became so important that we create a new name for it.
Russians enjoy the consequences of globalization on an everyday basis (instant access to the latest information and films, equal or improving standards of goods and services, etc.) without losing their cultural characteristics. Meanwhile, more attention has been paid to the status of the Russian language.
There are mass media in English (for example, the Moscow Times, St. Petersburg Times, Vladivostok Times, Sakhalin Independent, and other newspapers, as well as magazines, some journals, and a TV channel) ); however, they are not generally addressed to the Russian readers but are intended for international businessmen, tourists, and other guests. Scientific works are rarely published in English since the requirements for dissertations and a number of Russian grant-supported projects are that the results of the research must be published in Russian, which leads to a certain contradiction: Russian scientists want to be known abroad but they have to write their works in Russian, known to a comparatively limited academic circle in the world, rather than in English, the global language of intercultural communication.
High prestige of English words is revealed in a great number of Anglicized words in advertisement (Ustinova, 2005; Ustinova & Bhatia, 2005), brand names, company names, and others (A11 Hi-tech, Charm zone, Out hall, Pacific Tour service, etc.). English words are associated with elite style, success, and progress (image-maker, gym, diving, weekend, shopping, engineering, consulting, training, player, high tech). English loans are used as euphemisms, often due to their greater prestige (for instance, office manager instead of secretary).
Like many other languages, today’s Russian is seriously affected by English and undergoes dramatic changes. Most evident Anglicization of the Russian language is seen in the sphere of lexis. Computer, business, and pop-music terms are probably the most penetrated domains. New English loans are replacing former French and German ones (make-up is now more frequent than maquillage; sandwich is used instead of Butterbrod, etc.). English has influence even on other language borrowings in Russian. Thus, it is under its impact that we have a number of Asian words pronounced in an English-like manner (sushi, sashimi, shiitake, tamagochi, etc.) in Russian.
The terminological or professional character of borrowings and their obvious belonging to a certain social stage associated with new opportunities and prosperity are the main reasons why borrowings have a bright pragmatic meaning and not only in the Russian language.
Besides the direct function of naming a new thing or idea, English loans serve several stylistic functions (Romanov, 2000):
creating an exotic flavor
evaluative function, as an English loan is associated with greater prestige
euphemistic function
social and speech characteristics
language game (Rivlina, 2008) and
creating the effect of information emptiness of the text.
Russian has always had many borrowings, but they are so huge in number now that sometimes it’s even difficult to understand the texts. I think that the most useless borrowings which duplicate the word which already exists in Russian. Most often they are fashionable words like «комьюнити» (instead of «общество»), «интервью» (instead of «собеседование»), the «лофт» (instead of «чердак») etc.
Names of professions are a considerable part of loans. The Russian language borrows the majority of names of modern professions from English. It is very difficult to understand the meaning of names of professions «коуч», «сомелье» or «промоутер» without knowing foreign languages.
Influence of English on Russian in sports is very noticeable. All more or less popular sports have their own slang: tennis, mountain skis, etc. For example, «крузеры» (heavyweights, literally – boxers of cruiser weight), «проспекты» (perspective boxers), «челленджеры» and «контендеры» (applicants for a champion title) and similar "innovations" are to be found in sports articles about boxing.
The Russian language increases by different serious jargons and terms from the field of policy and economy: «брифинги» and «саммиты», «дефолты» and «монетизации» and other. There exists more general scientific and pseudoscientific lexicon, for example «харизма», «контент», «визуальный» and others. The majority of them are connected with computing. Some of them are used without changes: «upgrade», «browser», «e-mail», «mailbox», «provider», «hacker», «chat», «user», etc.
Word game is used either for a humorous effect or for attracting a customer’s attention. Thus we have books titled in a hybrid way: Духless (Spiritless) by Sergei Minaev; Рублевка. Live (Rublyovka. Live) by Oksana Robsky, МультиMILLIONAIRES (Multimillionaires) by Lena Lenina; and Брачный коNтракт или Who is ху… (Marriage Contract, or Who is Who…) by Tatyana Ogorodnikova.
Borrowed concepts which are sometimes labeled with a purist slant as “alien”, “empty”, and even “parasitical” by Russian linguists [Карасик 2004: 212-213], perform an extremely important function in accentuating, developing, specifying, and nuancing meanings, which are significant for the Russian linguaculture, but do not exist or are not as important in English.
This point can be illustrated with the lingual unit which seems to be one of the most emblematic examples of today’s English-Russian linguacultural interaction: it is one of the recent English borrowings in Russian - the word пиар (‘piar’). The way this borrowing has been adapted by Russian makes it in many ways different from its English prototype both linguistically and culturally. In English, PR/public relations means “ the work of forming in the minds of the general public a favourable opinion of an organization” or “good relations between an organization and the public” (according to Longman’s Dictionary of English Language and Culture). In Russian, this lexical unit was borrowed in the four following forms: it is used as an English insertion, e.g.: вопросы коммуникационного менеджмента и PR – issues of communication management and PR; PR-менеджер – PR manager; as a calque translation – связи с общественностью (public relations), e.g.: специалист по связям с общественностью – public relations specialist; as a transcribed word-combination - паблик рилейшнз, e.g.: агентство рекламы и паблик рилейшнз – advertisement and public relations agency; and as a transcribed abbreviation - пиар (‘piar’), e.g.: пиар и реклама – PR and advertisements. All these forms are used in the same professional-oriented meanings as in English. However, the last variant, пиар (‘piar’), has undergone deeper adaptation in Russian. First of all, it has developed a wide range of derivatives, e.g.: пиарщик (‘piarschik’, PR specialist), пиарить(ся), пропиарить(ся), распиарить, etc. (‘piarit’(sia), propiarit’(sia), raspiarit’(sia)’, etc., verbs of perfective and imperfective aspects, denoting roughly speaking “to PR (oneself)” or “to promote (oneself)”),
A research has been conducted to find out how my age-mates treat language innovations.
A survey has been carried out among the students of senior classes of my school. From the charts it is clear that most of pupils pay attention to lexicon when they read modern texts and they haven’t difficulties with understanding.
The majority (66%) considers emergence of a set of foreign words in the language positive dynamics in development, but more than a third of pupils are ready to fight for purity of Russian. The emotional relation to words including negative, speaks about great interest of young people in the language.
The effects of globalization are experienced at different levels of modern societies. Russians, for instance, westernize their communication styles and anglicize their discourses.
For example, the influences of global English on local languages in non-native-English communities have always been welcome, on the one hand, as a symbol of modernity and opportunity, and on the other hand are treated as potential threat and “pollution”.
