engleski

Global and local factors leading to the missing role of the media in the popularisation of Croatian equivalents to Anglicisms

Although the media have a unique role in the popularisation of neologisms (Ager 2003), Croatian equivalents to Anglicisms lack such support. The present paper discusses the causes that lie behind the missing role of the media. Firstly, the popularisation of equivalents to Anglicisms faces a ‘Catch-22 situation’. On the one hand, they need to be promoted in the media in order to be accepted and used by speakers, and on the other, they tend not to be used in the media prior to their acceptance in everyday speech. This is probably due to the modern deformalisation and familiarisation of media language under the influence of different factors such as the dynamics of public communication, the impact and dissemination of direct, more expressive and informal communicative patterns (Duszak 2006), and the adjustment of media language towards the audience's everyday speech (Bell 1991). Secondly, the use of Anglicisms is widely perceived as prestigious. Thirdly, the majority of speakers want to distance themselves from numerous and, according to many, aggressive changes in the Croatian language in the last decade of the 20th century marked by the tendency to find equivalents to internationalisms and words of Serbian origin, which were considered to have been imposed on Croatian language use. Fourthly, the use of equivalents to Anglicisms has not been presented as obligatory, unlike the use of equivalents to words of Serbian origin and internationalisms. Finally, according to a number of Croatian linguists, public language use in Croatia has been marked by a degree of carelessness and laziness. However, findings of the study that the author conducted among 320 Croatian language speakers suggest that the respondents still expect (formal) public discourse to create norms and standards. They think that the influence of English on Croatian should get more media attention in the sense of making speakers familiar with equivalents to Anglicisms and consequently enriching their vocabulary.

Anglicisms ; Croatian equivalents ; media

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