3
ABSTRACT
This dissertation aims to compare two linguistic phenomena, English as a Lingua Franca
(ELF) and Spanglish, both equally present in web communication. These linguistic
phenomena have many features in common because both are deviations or variations from
Standard English and Spanish. By the reason of their “deviant” nature, these phenomena
are harshly criticized by some scholars and researchers who are concerned about the
possible deterioration of English and Spanish. In contrast, a large group of scholars
appreciate both phenomena as the tangible manifestation of the vitality and evolution of
languages. This attitude is supported by the fact that all contemporary languages have been
shaped by various loan words and calques. The same English language has changed due to
loan words from French, Italian and Latin. The encounter between different languages and
the code-switching modality have always existed. These days, due to new technologies
such as the Internet, code-switching and lexical innovations are more frequent. In
particular, thanks to this study, I noticed ELF and Spanglish are typical traits of weblog
communication.
I selected fourteen on-line diaries (blogs) from which I chose posts with the highest
number of lexical innovations and unorthodox structures of English as a Lingua Franca and
Spanglish. All posts have been published between 2004 and 2014. A consistent amount of
posts are very recent in order to discover the most interesting lexical innovation. For
instance, a word like instagramming is very recent because it is based on a name of photo-
sharing programme that did not exist before the year 2010.
The majority of bloggers are young female. For this reason, I noticed a prevalence of
informal constructions. Furthermore, informal constructions are typical of web
communications. The dissertation is structured in four chapters plus the introduction and
conclusion in which I summarised the similarities between ELF and Spanglish. I also
exposed the results obtained. In the “Appendix” section I quoted the materials used for the
linguistic analysis.
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INTRODUCTION
This paper attempts to investigate the presence of two linguistic phenomena known as
English as a Lingua Franca and Spanglish in weblog communication. Both phenomena can
be considered variation or deviation from Standard English or Spanish. Because of their
non-standard nature, they are not used in formal publications. On the contrary, since web
communication is an informal context, ELF and Spanglish are frequently adopted in blog
context. The aim of my work is to find analogies between these two linguistic phenomena
through an analysis of twenty-one posts selected from fourteen blogs written in English as
a Lingua Franca and Spanglish. I have chosen posts that contain a noticeable amount of
ELF and Spanglish features, such as lexical innovations, word coinages, code mixing or
unconventional grammatical structures. I also paid attention to the content of posts. In
order to underline similarities between these lexical phenomena, I selected weblog devoted
to blogger’s hobbies, like cooking, astrology, or diaries that describe blogger’s lives. On
purpose, I analysed a wide period of entries including posts from the year 2004 to the
current 2014 to discover the most recent lexical innovations. The majority of bloggers are
bilingual female who frequently use lexical innovations to captivate readers’ interest or
they code-switch to underline their mixed heritage. It seems clear they are prone to play
with the creative possibilities of languages; they exploit communicative effect that a mixed
communication produces.
The dissertation is structured in four chapters. Chapter 1 is concerned with a general
overview on English as a Lingua Franca. I outlined the most significant features of this
language phenomenon. In addition, I listed scholar’s positions on the phenomenon and the
most famous patterns for describing the spread of the English language worldwide. In
Chapter 2 is devoted to the description of the Spanglish jargon. After a recollection of
Spanglish origin, I introduced defenders and detractors’ opinion over the phenomenon and
I exposed Spanglish’s main features. I completed this chapter with a general view of
Spanglish in internet, press and advertising. Chapter 3 deals with a linguistic analysis of
English as a Lingua Franca blogs. I added the collection of posts in the annexes’ section of
the dissertation. A substantial part of this chapter is concerned with a theoretical
description of online diaries (blogs). Chapter 4 presents a linguistic analysis of Spanglish
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blogs. In the last part of the chapter, I made a list of the most important findings. In the
end, the conclusion section is of paramount importance because it sums up the main
similarities between ELF and Spanglish and provides the exact number of items I found
through the analysis. The appendix contains the corpus which is collection of posts
selected on the Internet. These posts are interesting for my study not only because they
show real occurrences of ELF and Spanglish, but also because they provide authentic
pattern of web communications. As regarding the materials, I used books written in
English, Spanish, Italian and French. I also selected a noticeable amount of academic
articles and master’s thesis for the description of blogs, ELF and Spanglish.
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CHAPTER ONE: ENGLISH AS LINGUA FRANCA
1.1: English vs. Englishes
Since the Second World War, the English language in its Anglo-American variety has been
spread throughout Europe after the predominance of the French language
1
. The American
victory in the Second World War was one of the main reasons for the spread
2
of English in
Europe, yet not the only reason. Social phenomena like globalization, colonialism, the
internationalization of economy and later on the increasing usage of the internet have led
English to become the lingua franca of the new millennium. According to Firth (1996),
English as lingua franca
3
, also known with the acronym ELF is:
A contact language between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common
national culture, and for whom English is the chosen foreign language of communication (Firth 1996:
240).
1
Many false Anglicisms like footing or pressing are indeed French words adapted into English morphology
(San Vicente 2002: 19). It is worth to be remembered that the Normans from Northern France conquered
England in the 11th-century. This fact modified the linguistic situation of the country because Norman
French was introduced as the language of the elites (Mazzon 1994: 22). As Crystal (2003) remembers:
“English has borrowed words from over 350 languages, and over three-quarters of the English lexicon is
actually Classical or Romance in origin. Plainly, the view that to borrow words leads to a language’s decline
is absurd […]. Languages change their character, as a result of such borrowings, […] and these upset purists,
who seem unable to appreciate the expressive gains which came from having the option of choosing between
lexical alternatives, as in such “triplets” as Anglo-Saxon kingly, French royal and Latin regal” (Crystal 2003:
23).
2
According to Widdowson, spread and distribution are two different concepts. The distribution of a language
implies adoption ad conformity, while the spread of a language implies adaptation and nonconformity
(Widdowson 2003: 50).
3
In its original meaning, a lingua franca was an intermediary language adopted for communication purposes
between Arabian travellers and Western European people (House 2003: 557). There have been many lingua
francas in history. Ancient Greek was used in the Mediterranean for many centuries. In the Middle Ages a
mixture of Italian plus vocabulary taken from Turkish, French and other languages was adopted for
communication by sailors and merchant (Frath 2012, http://www.res-per-
nomen.org/respernomen/pubs/did/DID25-PFRATH-English-as-a-lingua-franca.doc). Lingua franca’s
etymology derives from the Old French franc meaning free and the Italian lingua that is language. Speaking a
Lingua Franca means to speak a free, liberating and effective language (Seidlhofer 2011: 80, 81) which
creates a third space, a sort of buffer space (European Commission 2010: 21). An alternative theory would
consider a lingua franca free of connection with particular countries and ethnicities (Vikør 2004: 329).
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These days, Firth’s definition seems to be outdated because it does not include native
speakers in ELF interactions. For this reason, Barbara Seidlhofer (2011) provided the
following definition
4
:
English as a lingua franca (ELF) can be thought of as any use of English among speakers of different
first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option
(Seidlhofer 2011: 7).
Since the English language is used as a means of communication by various people all
over the world, Seidlhofer (2011) affirms that:
When English is used as an international language it can either be a lingua franca […] or a clearly
distinguishable variety, and only such varieties would qualify as a legitimate use of language worthy of
study. It is they alone that represent “the global functions of English”. So the identification of “World
Englishes” […] varieties […] defined as discrete entities (Seidlhofer 2001: 75).
The most important varieties are British English and American English due to historical
and economical reasons
5
. English is still used institutionally as a consequence of the legacy
of British imperialism while American English has been widespread because of the United
States’ dominant economic position which often acts as a magnet for international business
and trade. It is worth remembered others reasons for the success of the English language.
For instance, the majority of scientific, technological, and academic information is
expressed in English. This language has been widespread all over the world because of
academic works, computer science and academic conventions (San Vicente 2002: 19). The
global spread of English is unprecedented and unparalleled in comparisons to past lingua
francas such as Latin, French and Arabic (Seidlhofer 2011: 3). According to Smith (1976)
English belongs to anyone because is an internationally auxiliary language:
4
In the opinion of Penny Ur, the literature regarding ELF is far from presenting clear-cut definitions of a
lingua franca. ELF can be a language, a variety of English different from native varieties or a means of
communication in diverse contexts of use (Ur 2010: 85).
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Over the last thirty years, sociolinguistics’ studies have been demonstrated that any language or dialect
performs the same communicative functions; nevertheless, people do not perceive languages or language
varieties at the same level because of social prejudices and social ideas over prestige. For this reason, British
and American varieties of English are considered more prestigious than others varieties. In Great Britain, the
most illustrious variety of English is the RP, also known as Received Pronunciation that is the
accent of Standard English in England. On the contrary, is very difficult to eradicate the prejudice against the
“Black British English”, an English variety spoken by Blacks in Great Britain (Mazzon 1994: 15, 91, 96).
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English belongs to the world and every nation, which uses it [...] with different tone, color and quality.
English is an internationally auxiliary language. It is yours [...] as much as it is mine [...]. We may use it
for different purposes and for different lengths of time on different occasions, but nonetheless it belongs
to all of us. English is one of the languages of Japan, Korea, Micronesia and the Philippines. It is one of
the languages of the Republic of China [...] and the US. No one needs to become more like Americans,
the British, the Australians, the Canadians or any other English speakers in order to lay claim on the
language (Smith 1976: 39).
Many scholars, such as Iamartino (2002), believe that the English language has an intrinsic
characteristic of being flexible, a sort of innate versatility that make it useful in different
contexts. If we analyze the English history, we find the root of this versatility. Unlike others
popular European languages, like French, Spanish and Italian, English never had a linguistic
academic authority. The English language adapted, translated and coined new words from the
very beginning. Over the centuries, the English language received loan words from the most
prestigious languages of those days. The first ascendancy on English came from Latin
language (Iamartino 2002: 23). Subsequently French, the language of Normans conquerors,
Italian, Spanish and Hindi influenced English (Mazzon 1994: 220). This mixed background is
one of the reasons of the popularity of the English language today. Scholars such as Rani
Rudby and Mario Saraceni acknowledge “the polymorphous nature of the English language”
(Rudby /Saraceni 2006: 13, 14), while Suresh Canagarajah underlines the dynamic and hybrid
nature of English (Canagarajah 2007: 923). Kachru (1986) explains another reason of English
success:
English is considered a symbol of modernization, [...] an extra arm for success and mobility in [...]
pluralistic societies. [...] In comparison with other languages of wider communication, knowing English is
like possessing the fabled Aladdin’s lamp, which permits one to open [...] the linguistic gates to
international business, technology, science and travel. In short, English provides linguistic power (Kachru
1986: 1).
Nowadays, as David Graddol puts it, the English language has two main functions: it is a
language for global communication and, at the same time, is the basis for building cultural
identities. This means that the first function needs common standards, while the second
role “encourages the development of local forms and hybrid varieties” (Graddol 2001: 27).
It cannot be denied that the culturally diversified background of English-speaking
communities is producing local Englishes with “cross-cultural functional range” (Burt
2005: 2). Seidlhofer’s words (2011) sum up well this concept:
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