The Pragmatic Turn in Studies of Linguistic Borrowing

A wealth of research, especially since the mid-20th century, has documented that borrowing is a key product of language contact (Haugen, 1950; Weinreich, 1953; Clyne, 1972, 2003). Linguistic borrowing concerns the incorporation of a structure or form from one language system (the source language, SL) to another (the recipient language, RL). To avoid unfortunate implications of ownership embedded in the term ‘borrowing’, terms such as ‘copying’ or ‘replication’ are sometimes preferred instead (Johanson, 2002; Matras, 2009) to refer to this concept, which encompasses ‘‘all kinds of copying processes, whether they are due to native speakers adopting elements from other languages into the recipient language, or whether they result from non-native speakers imposing properties of their native language onto a recipient language’’ (Haspelmath, 2009:36). In many respects, it makes sense to talk of a recent shift in focus – a ‘pragmatic turn’ – in research on linguistic borrowing, which implies a reorientation of its locus from the borrowed lexemes per se, to how the use of borrowed items is constrained by cultural, social or cognitive factors. This is a development towards socio-pragmatics (Andersen and Aijmer, 2011) which is congruous with a more general shift towards usage-based as opposed to structuralist approaches to language contact (Backus, 2014; Zenner and Van de Mieroop, in this issue; see further Rodríguez González, 1996; Go´mez Capuz, 1997; Khoutyz, 2009; Terkourafi, 2009; González Cruz and Rodríguez Medina, 2011; Onysko and Winter- Froemel, 2011; Fiedler, 2012; Winter-Froemel and Onysko, 2012; Kavgic´, 2013; Andersen, 2014; Onysko, 2016). While research on borrowing has traditionally focused on inventory issues, the semantics of individual forms and their degree of morphological and phonological adaptation, there is now a growing body of research that considers factors that may be seen to motivate borrowing, such as the emblematic nature of individual forms and their potential for expressing notions like ‘coolness’, urbanism, youth, globalisation, etc. – reflecting common associations with particular usage groups – as well as the presumed or observed pragmatic effects of selecting a borrowed item in place of its domestic alternatives. Borrowing may also be related to the more general social prestige of the source language culture, mental processing, precision, creativity, markedness or the like.