The influence of English on German business language: A corpus -based study of the use of Anglicisms in the German business press

摘要

In Germany, the current debate about Anglicisms focuses primarily on general language use, whereas languages for specific purposes (except for advertising) have not come under similar scrutiny. German business language is one area where English influence has long been perceived as strong, yet it has not been studied as extensively as language in general. This study will focus exclusively on the English lexical influence on German business language over time and across different text types. Randomly selected articles (cover stories, editorials, and letters to the editor) of one of Germany's major business magazines, Wirtschaftswoche, serve as the corpus of the study. The analyzed time period is from 1973 until 2003. The objective of this study is to describe and analyze changes in German business language, and more specifically in the language of the German business press.;Many previous studies focused on lexical borrowing as one of the most obvious result of language contact, but not a lot of use has been made of large text corpora and the methodology of corpus linguistics in the area of German business language. Corpus-based research into the distribution and the nature of Anglicism over time and in different genres is beneficial for the research field in providing new and representative results. The use of a self-designed diachronic corpus presents the opportunity to highlight whether there is empirical proof for an ever-increasing impact of English in the general business domain. The study also examines the specific use of Anglicisms at different times and in different text types and in respect to semantic classifications.;The results of the study show a significant increase in the use of Anglicisms over the investigation period in all examined text types. As far as the use of Anglicisms in different text types are concerned, the highest percentage of English loanwords was found in cover stories. The opinion-centered genres contained less Anglicism. The results indicate that there is a considerable difference in the use of Anglicisms between journalists and readers.