Psycho/socio/linguistics of english borrowings in ukrainian: aspects of status and functions

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Psycho/socio/linguistics of english borrowings in ukrainian: aspects of status and functions

Yuliia Honcharova,

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages for Social and Economic Specialities of Oles Honchar Dnipro National University (Dnipro, Ukraine)

Oleksandra Kolomoichenko,

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages for Social and Economic Specialities of Oles Honchar Dnipro National University (Dnipro, Ukraine)

The article explores the actual problems ofpsychology and sociolinguistics related to the study ofthe phenomenon oflanguage borrowing. The interaction between psychological, sociological and linguistic prerequisitesfor borrowing of English financial and economic terms were analyzed. The content of such notions as status, function andprestige of language were actualized. The notion of language prestige is considered from different positions and receives asymmetric assessments. However, this emphasizes its impact on theformation of language status again. The status is closely related tofunctionality, since it makes sense only in the context of language usage. The article attempts to go beyond the ordinary line ofpsycholinguistic research through an interdisciplinary approach that will help to uncover certain laws of the language process and to form a modern psycho/socio/linguistic “portrait” of the Ukrainian society. In the course of the study, we conducted a linguistic experiment to analyze the changes in the attitude of recipients within a certain “semiotic group” to the concepts of status, functions and prestige of the Ukrainian language, which is used in the professional environment along with English. The psycho-linguistic basis of the study involves the actualization of the subjective component in the interpretation of the linguistic material. The article presents the survey results which were obtained due to a specially developed questionnaire that allows monitoring of various aspects of the linguistic behaviour of an individual or a separate community. Investigating the dynamics ofthe influence ofpsycho/socio/linguistic factors on the formation of an individual professional vocabulary, we concluded that the extra-linguistic factors are very important for understanding the linguistic behaviour of the recipients and the formation of the linguistic allegiance of individuals.

Key words: borrowing, language status and functions, prestige of the language, financial and economic discourse, linguistic allegiance.

linguistics english borrowing

Юлія ГОНЧАРОВА,

кандидат філологічних наук, доцент кафедри іноземних мов для соціально-економічних спеціальностей Дніпровського національного університету імені Олеся Гончара (Дніпро, Україна)

Олександра КОЛОМОЙЧЕНКО,

кандидат філологічних наук, доцент кафедри іноземних мов для соціально-економічних спеціальностей Дніпровського національного університету імені Олеся Гончара (Дніпро, Україна)

ПСИХО/СОЦІО/ЛІНГВІСТИКА АНГЛІЙСЬКИХ ЗАПОЗИЧЕНЬ В УКРАЇНСЬКІЙ МОВІ: АСПЕКТИ СТАТУСУ І ФУНКЦІЙ

У статті досліджено актуальні проблеми психології та соціолінгвістики, пов'язані з вивченням феномену запозичення мови. Проаналізовано взаємодію психологічних, соціологічних і лінгвістичних передумов запозичення англійських фінансово-економічних термінів. Актуалізовано зміст таких понять, як статус, функція та престиж мови. Поняття мовної престижності розглядається з різних позицій та отримує асиметричні оцінки. Однак це підкреслює його вплив на формування мовного статусу. Статус мови тісно пов'язаний із функціональністю, оскільки він має сенс лише в контексті використання цієї мови. Вихід за межі звичайної лінії психолінгвістичного дослідження через міждисциплінарний підхід дає можливість розкрити певні закономірності мовного процесу й сформувати сучасний психо/ соціально-мовний «портрет» українського суспільства. Міждисциплінарний характер дослідження сприяв всебічному вивченню динаміки процесу запозичення лексичних одиниць, а саме англіцизмів у фінансово-економічній сфері. У ході дослідження було проведено лінгвістичний експеримент задля аналізу зміни ставлення реципієнтів у межах певної «семіотичної групи» до понять статусу, функцій і престижу української мови, яка використовується в професійному середовищі поряд з англійською. Психолінгвістична основа дослідження передбачає актуалізацію суб'єктивного компонента в інтерпретації мовного матеріалу. У статті представлені результати опитування, які були отримані завдяки спеціально розробленій анкеті, що дозволяє відстежити різні аспекти мовної поведінки людини чи окремої громади. Досліджуючи динаміку впливу психо/соціо/лінгвістичних факторів на формування індивідуальної професійної лексики, ми дійшли висновку, що екстралінгвістичні фактори дуже важливі для розуміння мовної поведінки реципієнтів і формування мовної вірності індивідів.

Ключові слова: запозичення, мовний статус і функції, престиж мови, фінансово-економічний дискурс, вірність мові.

Introduction

Formulation of the problem and state of the research. The issue of loanwords has always been in the focus of scholarly attention. It is considered in the context of the theory of cognitive development (L. Vygotsky, A. Leontiev, E. Lenneberg, F. L. Wells and others), in the light of linguistic norms (F. Saus- sure, L. Shcherba, E. Koseriu, L. Verbytska), loanword adaptation and usage (S. Peperkamp, L. Archipenko, Y. Bytkivska, K. Horodenska), within the realm of psychosociology of language (S. Moskovici) and areal linguistics. However, relatively little attention has targeted the study of the interplay between these phenomena. Existing interdisciplinary groundwork pushes to a deeper study of issues of the Ukrainian language status and corpus planning relevant for the Ukrainian philological science today. These questions not only fit into the European map of research but also show the trends of the world philological science (Klein, 1996; Ausburg, 2006). Interdisciplinarity, cross- or transdisciplinarity is a phenomenon inherent in the scientific discourse of the 21st century, therefore, attempts to go beyond the usual line of psycholinguistic research without destroying the canons of psycholinguistics, in our opinion, will contribute to the disclosure of certain laws of the linguistic process and the formation of a modern psycho/socio-lingual “portrait» of the Ukrainian society. Students, as a stable social age group with specific features of linguistic behaviour and linguistic consciousness, are a fragment of the general linguistic “portrait” of society, so, we selected them as respondents for questioning and assessment the peculiarities of their activity in a modern financial and economic discursive field.

The purpose of the study is to identify and analyze the linguistic and extra-linguistic factors of the use of English-language borrowings in the Ukrainian financial and economic discourse in the context of determining the status and functionality of the Ukrainian language. Achieving the goal involves solving the following tasks:

considering the interaction between psychological, sociological and linguistic prerequisites for borrowing of English financial and economic terms;

defining the content of such notions as status, function and prestige of language;

identifying the conditions under which the attitude to the use of foreign borrowings, namely Anglicisms, in the professional sphere changes;

seeking the ways and determining the conditions for preservation and enrichment of the Ukrainian language.

The object of the study is the financial and economic terms borrowed from the English language, which have the established equivalents in Ukrainian, do not have generally recognized Ukrainian equivalents, or these equivalents are controversial. The research material is the Ukrainian financial and economic discourse.

Methods and techniques of the research

The main methods of research are descriptive, comparative and kind of survey method - questionnaires. The descriptive method has been used to form the classification of borrowings in the Ukrainian financial and economic discourse. The comparative method allows to determine the nature of pragmatics of using English-language borrowings in financial and economic discourse; The questionnaire has an exceptional value for collecting primary information. Among the existing methods and approaches to studying the phenomenon of borrowing the lexical units on the basis of interdisciplinary interaction the following were selected:

the integrative approach as one of the perspective directions of modern research in the field of systematic study of foreign language borrowings, considering various factors. Psycho/socio/linguis- tic analysis is an example of a comprehensive study of the “life” of a borrowed lexical unit, which takes into account the psychological, social and linguistic attributes.

the tool of data collection for obtaining the necessary factual material at the initial stage of the study;

a linguistic experiment for learning the nature of the reception of borrowing in the Ukrainian financial and economic discourse and the status of the Ukrainian language;

the technique of psycholinguistic comparison for defining a subjective component in a choice of a variant of a functional unit and its pragmatic meaning;

the quantitative calculation for determining the quantitative characteristics of the features of the English borrowings in the investigated financial and economic discourse.

Basic lecture. To solve the objectives we considered the work of leading experts in the identified issues. Thus, in Uriehl Vajnrajh's works, who is one of the founders of sociolinguistics, the key directions of the study of the process of foreign language lexical units borrowing were formulated. Three determinants of relevant factors were characterized in his theory, including extralinguistic, psycholinguistic and, actually, linguistic. The scientist emphasizes that the formation of an individual lexicon is a complex psycho/ sociolinguistic process, in which a specific role is played by the feeling of linguistic allegiance (Vajn- rajh, 1979: 18). However, according to Uriehl Vajn- rajh, the term “linguistic allegiance» has some uncertainty. At present, in our view, the meaning of this term is actualized by the so-called “linguistic turn”, within which the subjective component is conceptually significant.

An important aspect that has also been taken into consideration within the chosen perspective is the question of the status and functions of the language. These questions are comprehensively considered in the works of W. F. Mackey, U. Ammon, H. Haar- mann, R. Willemyns, J. Aitchison and others. Psycho and sociolinguistic aspects of studying the phenomenon of foreign language lexical units borrowing are interspersed with the issues of language policy, status and language functions, the conditions of terms- analog usage - that is, those terms that have commonly accepted equivalents in the recipient language, the definition of external factors of their dissemination, and so on.

So, W. F. Mackey tries to overcome the terminological confusion which, in his opinion, exists in the issues that affect the understanding of the notion of status, prestige and functions of a particular language. He notes that “the essential difference between prestige, function and status is the difference between past, present and future” (Mackey, 1989: 4).

Thus, the concept of language prestige is connected with historical achievements, the notion of status is associated with the potential of the language, which consists of its usage possibilities in legal, cultural, economic, political, and demographic areas, each of them, in turn, depends on the extralinguistic factors. The function of the language is characterized by the urgency of its usage at the moment. In addition, the interaction of these concepts has a certain specificity. As for prestige, this concept, according to W. F. Mackey, is secondary compared to status and function and plays a “largely symbolic” role (Mackey, 1989: 4).

R. Willemyns understands the concept of prestige differently. He raises the question of “the “prestige” character of one language over another” (Willemyns, 1992: 4) and considers the impact of socio-economic factors on the language of communication. According to R. Willemyns, “a want for upward social mobility” encourages people to conscious or unconscious usage of a more prestigious language in an economic or social sense. It can be prevented by the feeling of human dignity when native speakers or bilinguals try to protect the language that is oppressed. (Willemyns, 1992: 4).

Obviously, the notion of language prestige is considered from different positions and receives asymmetric assessments. However, this emphasizes its impact on the formation of language status again. The status is closely related to functionality, since it makes sense only in the context of language usage. As Mackey aptly notes, “we can do more with a language everyone understands than with one no one knows but all admire” (Mackey, 1989: 5). According to J. Atchison, the question of language status requires constant monitoring, and forms and methods of its evaluation must be constantly improved (Atchison, 1991: 487). It is possible to increase the language status due to the programmes of “language revitalization” (J. A. Fishman, O. J. Obiero) or by expanding its functions, including legal functions, leisure functions and service functions (W. F. Mackey).

To study the interaction of psycho/socio linguistic prerequisites of foreign language terms borrowing, namely Anglicisms, and the analysis of the principles of their functioning in the Ukrainian financial and economic discourse, we conducted a survey of 184 respondents. The survey involved the students who obtain their education at Faculty of Economics and Faculty of International Economics in Oles Honchar Dnipro National University. Thus, the participants was sufficiently homogeneous in terms of age, education and the peculiarities of linguistic behaviour.

We are going to describe briefly the essence of our survey or linguistic experiment. As Finnish linguist A. Mustajoki notes, the experiment should involve the informants participation, whose answers are the research material (Mustajoki, 2006). The opposite of this approach is the analysis of real linguistic material when the opinion of “outsiders”, in other words, the subjective aspect is not taken into account. The psycho-linguistic basis of the study involves actualization of the subjective component in the interpretation of the linguistic material, which, from the viewpoint of psycholinguists, namely, O. Leontiev, is not an obstacle, but rather an important element of the diagnosis of the linguistic paradigm (Leontev, 2003). That is, it allows monitoring various aspects of the linguistic behaviour of an individual or a separate community, taking into consideration the various factors (linguistic or extra-linguistic), which influence the choice of one or another lexical unit within the “semiotic group”.

It is known that the use of a foreign language term plays a special role in the organization of communication and in the relations between communicants - personal, business or social: it reflects the place of the nominee in the social structure of the society, serves as a means of determining the social distance between communicators, describes the situations of communication (formal, semi-formal or informal), shows the nature of the relationship, and promotes the organization of these relations. All these questions of personal perception and language usage are closely related to the problems of language status and its functions. Analyzing the tendencies of students' attitudes toward the concepts of status and prestige of the Ukrainian language used in the professional environment and trying to recreate the dynamics of these psycholinguistic processes, we realized that social and political aspects are extremely important for understanding the linguistic behaviour of the recipients.

It should be noted that the linguistic experiment was conducted in two stages: in 2014, when there was a surge of patriotism and civic engagement, and in early 2018, when the country was accustomed to living in a state of war, and the economic situation is rather complicated. The questionnaire consists of three broad issues that were identical in 2014 and 2018. The proposed toolkit serves as a technical means aimed at identifying and systematizing the facts of linguistic behaviour, that is peculiar for the individuals within a particular professional group, of searching and anchoring the most accurate equivalent of English-language borrowings in the Ukrainian language.

The first question of the questionnaire was the following: Which of the proposed terms would you use in professional communication? You should tick the selected (v)

The respondents' answers to this issue tend to repetition of different forms, in other words, the use of both English version of the term and its Ukrainian equivalent. For example: кеш-готівка, флаєр- листівка, сейл-розпродаж, дисконт-знижка, сервіс-обслуговування. These units are typically used to duplicate the terms of national origin, that is, the tautology in this context is considered as a stylistic tool attracting the attention of the audience. It indicates the high functionality of the Ukrainian language and, at the same time, the prevalence of English in the professional environment, which plays an extraordinary role in formation of modern Ukrainian terminology system. Furthermore, it should be noted that the English terms-analogs, which have a compressed form, are used to replace the descriptive clauses, in other words, with a purely pragmatic purpose.

Picture 1

This diagram shows that in 2014, only 15% of the interviewed students used both terms in their professional communication, but in 2018 this figure increased to 35%. In turn, the commitment of respondents to the English equivalent of the term increased more than twice from 20% in 2014 to 45% in 2018, which is rather unexpected. In our opinion, this tendency is due to not only linguistic factors mentioned above, but also extra-linguistic ones. As socio-psychological reasons and factors of borrowing use the linguists consider that perception of a foreign word as more prestigious and fashionable. It is proved that it is precisely the one that is identified and fixed in the subconscious. This happens because the foreign language lexeme is stylistically special, and because of its foreign language meaning the content is encrypted and understandable only by the person who uses it. The use of such lexemes shows that the speaker belongs to the “elite” layer and is prestigious: моніторінг - instead of спостереження, пудлінг - instead of усереднення, бакетинг - instead of незаконна діяльність брокерів. However, there are also socio-economic factors (slow reforms, lack of sustainable economic growth), which explain the desire to use English-language terms-analogs to illustrate a peculiar protest.

The next question was: Can you find the equivalent of the following terms in the Ukrainian language?

This issue has caused a lot of discussions and difficulties among our respondents. On the one hand, as it is noted by the scientists (A. Dubnik, T Prystaiko) English terms usually come to the Ukrainian language, as well as to many other languages, through publications by means of transcription or transliteration. But on the other hand, a significant role is played by the process of identifying the semantic content of the term. So, sometimes it is quite difficult to find one single equivalent to characterize the entire semantics of the term.

In terms of pragmatics it is important to consider both sides of the communication process. The speaker and the listener should have certain common background knowledge to understand the purpose of this process and the context of specific statements, which can include not only linguistic, but also historic, cultural and social details. All these factors led to the choice of respondents' proposed equivalents:

As a result, more than 50% of the respondents were not able to pick up the Ukrainian equivalent apart from the transliteration of the term by the Ukrainian graphic system. This is because the term in English has a large load meaningful content and usually characterized by the absence of one- word equivalent in Ukrainian generating either reunification of several concepts or verbosity. The recipients' answers in the questionnaire prove this. Such words as маркетінг, аутсорсінг, тренінг, банкінг and others are widely used not only in professional language, but in the Ukrainian colloquial speech.

To obtain more definitive indicators for assessing the processes of the language status changing, we offered the last question in our survey: Do you consider your mother tongue to be status?

Picture 2

As it can be seen in picture 2, against the background of rising the sense of patriotism, national consciousness and dedication two thirds of the respondents consider their mother tongue to be status. Analyzing the results of the answers to the first and third questions, we can understand that precisely considering the Ukrainian language as status the respondents chose the Ukrainian variants of the proposed terms.

Picture 3

As for the indicators of 2018 (Pic. 3), they differ from the previous ones significantly. There are a lot of both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors for that. On the one hand, Ukrainian economic terminology is an open and dynamic system that is developing intensively and has a lot of neologisms, expanding the scope of its functioning, adding more and more new words of foreign origin. Nowadays the English language has an international status, moreover it is the language of the world science. Therefore, more Anglicisms get into the language of professional direction. However, if we take into consideration the extra-linguistic factors of economic terminology replenishment with English borrowings at the current stage of development, the most important are social and political processes, which entail the weakening of linguistic allegiance.

Conclusions

Despite the sufficient state of development of the problem of linguistic contacts and the existence of a steady scientific interest in issues related to the processes of foreign language borrowing, until now, the aspects of the status and functions of the Ukrainian language have not been comprehensively reviewed, tested and reinterpreted from the standpoint of modern psycho/ socio/linguistics. The proposed questionnaire may later be applied not only as a tool used in the framework of a narrow study, but if revised with the observance of psy- cho/socio/linguistic procedures it can be utilized as an express method for assessing changes in the status and functions of the Ukrainian language, taking into account its constant development.

To summarize, the interdisciplinary nature of the research contributed to a comprehensive study of the dynamics of the process of borrowing the lexical units, namely Anglicisms in the financial and economic sphere. The multiplicity of using the English borrowings within a specific “semiotic group” has become an indicator of the change in the status and functions of the Ukrainian language in a specified period of time and confirmed the existence of influence of extralinguistic factors on the formation of linguistic allegiance.

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