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Lingua mobilis №5 (24), 2010
ГРАФИЧЕСКАЯ КОНТАМИНАЦИЯ И КОНТАМИНИРОВАННЫЕ ГИБРИДЫ В СОВРЕМЕННОМ АНГЛИЙСКОМ И РУССКОМ ЯЗЫКАХ
Н. А. Лаврова
В статье анализируются структурные, семантические и стилистико-прагматические характеристики некоторых малопродуктивных видов контаминированных слов современного английского и русского языков. Первая группа представлена словами, один из элементов которых принадлежит иностранному языку, то есть является полностью неассимилированным в языке-реципиенте. Графическая контаминация возникает посредством некоторых паралингвистических средств, в частности - использованием курсива, полужирного шрифта и капитализации части слова.
Ключевые слова: контаминация, псевдочленение, псевдомотивация, перлокутивное намерение.
The modem stage of the development of the Russian language as well as some other European languages is characterized by an active penetration of Anglicisms and Americanisms, which can be accounted for by economic, socio-cultural, political and psychological reasons. The incorporation of foreign words into the Russian language and their quick adaptation are down to both societal and scientific changes. Most of the factors are extralinguistic, some of them are among the following:
1. Wide channels of information as the result of the advent of the Internet.
2. The development of the world market and an increasing role of international relationship.
3. The activization of business, trade and cultural relationships, also popularity and affordability of overseas tourism.
According G.A. Svirenkova [7], the following reasons of borrowing foreign words can be singled out:
- The tendency to the internationalization of lexis.
- The need to nominate new things, notions and phenomena.
- The absence of a precise name or inefficiency of a native word in comparison to a foreign one. What is meant here is that a native word
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may lack certain connotations that describe a new phenomenon: sponsor, virtual, spray. These words have been transliterated into Russian, because translating them wasn’t deemed possible - there were no such things in Russia until quite recently.
- The necessity to convey with the help of a foreign word lengthy or cumbersome expressions: термопот - thermopot; пиллинг - pealing: a type of cream that removes dead skin cells; квиз - quiz: a radio or TV programme with prizes for those who correctly answer various questions or quizzes.
- Positive, reverential attitude to a foreign word, regarding it as more scientific, prestigious, high-flown: имидж (image), прайс-лист (pricelist), шоу (show), презентация (presentation), эксклюзивный (exclusive).
- The necessity to specify the meaning of the word: сэндвич, гамбургер, чизбургер, фишбургер.
Before passing on to the consideration of contaminated hybrids, we would like to clarify what we understand under the term “hybrid”. The numerous definitions of this word indicate that its treatment varies with different authors. I.M. Sazanez [6] points out that there are several aspects to the existence and functioning of contaminated words. We modified
I.M. Sazanez’ classification by changing some of the criteria and adding something that was nor originally there:
1. The language level: hybridization can be regarded not only on the word-building level, but also on the level of the form of the word. This is relevant for flectional languages only. For instance, the word «драйв» (the English “drive”) is not a hybrid, but if we decline the word (драйва, драйве), a hybrid will emerge with a Russian formal suffix (ending).
2. Etymological contents of the hybrid: a) the traditional understanding of the hybrid goes that a hybrid is a combination of a Greek and a Latin elements, for instance: biathlon (from Latin bis - twice and Greek athlos - contest); dysfunction (from Greek dys- - bad and Latin function - function); pandeism (from Greek pan - all and Latin dues - God); sociology (from Latin socios - comrade and Greek logos - word, reason, discourse); b) a hybrid is a combination of English and Romance wordbuilding elements: loveable (love - Native English and -able - Latin); c) a hybrid is a combination of English and other word-forming elements: lawful (law - Scandinavian and -ful - Native English); d) hybrids are words that consist of word-building elements belonging to different language-groups; elements that belong to one and the same language group
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are not hybrids (for instance, a combination of English and Scandinavian elements); e) hybrids are words that consist of elements synchronically belonging to different languages, retaining different orthography, that is, one of the elements is non-assimilated, foreign to the recipient language from the viewpoint of the form, semantics, graphical form and phonology (neither transliteration nor transcribing takes place). For the present work this understanding seems to be particularly relevant; f) a hybrid is a transcribed or transliterated foreign word - фэшн (fashion), дизайн (design), сампл (sample); g) hybrids are derived words with Russian suffixes added to a transliterated foreign word, for instance: фудстэмпщик - a person who is eligible for food stamps; ланчевать - to have lunch; h) treatment of any contaminated word as a hybrid.
3. The structure of hybrids: one the one hand, a hybrid can be regarded as a derived word (with suffixation or prefixation); on the other hand, a hybrid can be referred to as a compound.
The background of hybridism in English is shaped by the historical peculiarities of its development. From the 5th century onwards, the English language has been influenced to a lesser of greater extent by foreign lexis and word-building elements, as a result, the bigger part of modern English word stock is constituted by loan words (circa 70%), primarily coming from Latin (cup, wall, cherry), French (ballet, beret), Greek (atom, phenomenon), Scandinavian (cast, die, ill, loose), Italian (bank, violin), Spanish (potato, tomato), Portuguese (veranda, padre), German (kitch, glitch, blitzkrieg), Dutch (lack, mud), Arab (coffee, lemon), Russian (tsar, sputnik), Chinese (tea), and many other languages [6]. It is well known that Romance languages played a major role in shaping the word-stock of modern English, in particular - Latin and French. The rationale behind borrowing many foreign words is the necessity to fill nominative gaps in the sphere of science, arts, religion, trade, construction works and many others: “Apart from enriching English vocabulary by new words and new meanings, borrowing also facilitated the development of new word-forming patterns, which started to be used to derive new words not only from foreign lexemes but also from English proper. All this served as a precondition for hybridism in English...” [6, С. 8]. One of the sources of hybrids in English is lexical assimilation, the highest degree of assimilation characterizes Latin and French borrowings of Middle English and The Renaissance period, also Scandinavian borrowings, many of them are frequent words in English and derive new hybrids. Thus, we can say that hybridism can be regarded as an adaptation mechanism of foreign lexis assimilation.
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Starting from the Middle English Period, apart from English proper there appeared many foreign affixes, which was spurred on by the penetration into English of related words formed with the help of one and the same affix. Gradually, as foreign words started to be assimilated, those affixes were singled out and started to be actively used in the process of derivation of both hybrids and English proper words. Given the fact that the inventory of English word-building affixes had already been formed, English started to utilize foreign elements, which entered the language together with multiple loan words. Some of the foreign affixes lend new derivational meanings to words, filling derivational gaps; in other cases, borrowed elements start to rival with English proper elements, as a result their usage is differentiated.
Special treatment should be given to a relatively small group of hybrids, which we call contaminated. They are gathering momentum at present and have started to be actively used in different types of discourse. Contaminated hybrids are formed by means of merging two or more words, one of which is foreign and therefore completely non-assimilated in the target language, for instance: fruitерия, ЪеаШык; уdiviтелъная мебель; npnRUHmn; cinematheka; videorazzi. One of the prerequisites for the emergence of such a word and decoding it correctly is phonological resemblance between a foreign word and an English one. As for the semantic affinity of the words, it can be stated that in the majority of cases there is none. This factor is the key to understanding the perlocutionary intent of the speaker, as well as the major functions, displayed by a contaminated hybrid.
A contaminated hybrid can be referred to as a meta-semiotic unit, in other words, a unit of secondary nomination. It means that the main function of contaminated words is not only nominative-informative, but also advertising and pragmatic, according to which the intention of the word-smith comprises the following:
1. Drawing the recipient’s attention towards the object or phenomenon to which the contaminated word refers.
2. Causing a rational or an emotional reaction on the part of the recipient.
3. Causing an action-reaction: getting the recipient to buy a certain product or to subscribe to a service.
The cited functions are all pragmatic. A separate block is formed by a number of functions of psychological character. They are down to a person’s needs: showing a sense of humour; being different, catching;
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self-expression, self-realization; creativity. The leading function of a contaminated word, one of the elements of which is a non-assimilated foreign lexeme, is advertising. The data we analyzed serves a good proof of it. All the hybrid words we have encountered are product, service or brand names. H.L. Golovleva [5] points out that an advertising message contains at least one of the following attention indicators: a relatively short advertising message; the usage of a certain colour scheme; the presence of sound and movement (in television and radio-advertisements); the usage of various types of contrasts; the right-oriented layout of the message. We posit that a contaminated hybrid is a contrastive attention indicator, because the merging of two elements belonging to different languages shatters the expected, and everything that is unusual, non-automatic requires more time on the part of the recipient to correctly decode and interpret. It must be stressed that the formation of non-assimilated hybrids is not directly linked to the historical development of the language, in other words there are no objective intralinguistic reasons for the formation of such words; the wordsmith’s intention is to play with the word in order to draw the recipient’s attention to this very word or to the notion that it represents (in the latter case we speak of the advertising-pragmatic function). One should clearly differentiate between hybridism as a tendency in the development of the language caused by intralinguistic (the development of the language) and extralinguistic factors - language interaction and either bilateral or unilateral influence on each other; and hybridism that comes up synchronically, it doesn’t effect the language as a system and does not radically change the paradigm of its word-building patterns. Given that advertising is socially adapted, we presume that a product or a service name that are contaminated hybrids, are mostly youth-oriented. This is down to the fact that adolescents are more relaxed about punning and word-play, they rarely feel aversion to it. Youths are more tolerant of and more perceptive to a foreign culture and influence, they are usually familiar with the latest technical developments that have come to us together with the words for them, which are often non-assimilated (гаджет - gadget, паттерн - pattern, оффшорный - off-shore, мерчендайзер -merchandizes ритейл - retail, дискаунт - discount, фэнтези - fantasy). Apart from that, from lexicological point of view, transliterated foreign words, used as expressive synonyms of the words that exist in the recipient language, in many cases are slang words, which are also more frequent in youths’ language and speech. Taking into consideration the advertising channel, we can state that to decode the contaminated hybrid
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correctly one definitely needs a visual support, so the advertising channel can be either printed or audio-visual.
The next question that should be treated separately is what linguistic valeur contaminated hybrids have and whether they are going to be imbibed by the language or ousted from it? It is well known that the language of advertisements constantly changes to suit the temporary fads and to be relevant. As a result, various expressive means are also changing, because if a device gets constantly repeated, it becomes mechanical and people no longer perceive it as new or regard it as efficient. There is an opinion that contaminated hybrids are not needed, they are too fancy and superfluous and therefore they ‘litter’ a language, one should avoid using them in speech and tend to resort to classical stylistic figures if in need of an expressive means. This statement could be argued, though. It is impossible to stem the natural development of any language: any new formation is a kind of deviation from the norm in virtue of its not being registered by dictionaries. The creation of an expressive, stylistically marked neologism, provided that it is not downgrading, trivial or indecent, reveals the wordsmith’s artistic and intellectual capacity, and this should be welcome. The specifics of advertising language can be summed up in the following way:
“Advertising language is of course loaded language. Its primary aim is to attract our attention and dispose us favorably towards the product or service on offer. Advertisers use language quite distinctively: there are certainly advantages in making bizarre and controversial statements in unusual ways as well as communicating with people using simple, straightforward language... Catching our attention and imagination and aiding memory are perhaps the primary functions of advertising languages: usual or stylish words and short, crisp sentences are easy to repeat and remember. And our memories are also served by brand names, slogans and catch-phrases, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, snatches of song and verse and of course endless repetition” [9, С. 96].
Traditionally contamination can be defined as a merging of quasi-morphs or morphemic splinters of two or (rarely) more language units on the basis of their structural, functional, semantic or subjective similarity, as a result there emerges a new linguistic unit. Contamination is observed on all language levels: phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic, phraseological. Most of the linguists are unanimous in the opinion that at present contamination presents one of the most efficient means of punning and word-play (V.V. Shadruchina, 2003; S.V Iljasova, 2001; L.P. Amiri,
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2007; A.V Stacheeva, 2008). According to V.V Lopatin [7], contaminated words are not ‘linguistic invalids’, in a certain sense, they are more needed in some specific context than the usual, dictionary words.
Graphic contamination presupposes capitalization, or marking in bold or in italics the communicatively relevant part of the word.
The formation of contaminated words as well as some other occasional words is down to such inherent properties of the lexical system as dynamism and receptivity. At present, a certain influence of contaminated words on the speech situation in many countries, including Russia, Great Britain and the USA, can be observed. This activates the problems connected with the analysis of speech innovations: «The neological boom of the recent decades is reflected in the publicistic style: in newspapers, mass media and literary critiques, which promptly react to societal changes [5, С. 2].
The realization of the expressive function can be attained either through a normative use of phonetic, grammatical and lexical language resources, or through all kinds of deviations from the norm. In this respect, a contaminated word occupies a medial position between a speech mistake and a different type of norm. This is to say that depending on its structure and semantics, a contaminated word can be either normative, neutral, a result of a tongue-slip, as well as an expressive, occasional formation. S.V. Iljasova points out that phenomena that traditionally were qualified as mistakes and errors are perceived within the framework of modern, communicative, approach not as a violation of the norm, but as a realization of the communicative norm, which is defined by the purport of an advertisement. Consequently, the dichotomy “right-wrong” is substituted by the dichotomy “relevant-irrelevant”. To attain expressivity, graphic contamination resorts to font-marking, pseudo-parcelling, pseudo-motivation. Pseudo-parcelling results in the wrong perception of graphic contamination: the word sounds monosemantic, though in reality it is ambivalent, contaminated, both on the level of semantics and on the level of structure. Some examples are: уДАЧНОЕ предложение (удачный + дачный), опИраторы (пираты + операторы), ФАНТАстическое предложение, короЛЕВские палочки ( королевский + лев). In the latter example the capitalization of the middle part of the word («лев» - ‘lion’) accentuates the seme “exquisiteness, high quality”. This meaning is foregrounded by means of placing on the package the picture of a lion wearing a crown (in Russian the words “royal” and “lion” share three graphemes). Graphic contamination can simultaneously be a hy-
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brid, in which case it is called “graphohybridization”: Тульский РЯяник; прощай, PRe3^eHm, SOSmaeb компанию, VIPycK; aRMadillo An Internet First Mover; COINTREAUVERSIAL (COINTREAU). Symbols can also be part of graphic contamination: Фи$ка, Без Залога ¥€$!, Merr¥ Christmas.
To become part of literary language and to be codified, a new formation should possess the following qualities: it must be socially relevant; must be characterized by a high degree of stability, which is attained by the frequency of usage; must possess semantic richness, that it, polysemy; functional relevance; correspond to the language norm requirements. Of all the cited characteristics usually attributed to a normative word, graphic contamination and contaminated hybrids meet only the fourth requirement, which testifies to their rather slim chances of entering a dictionary or becoming part and parcel of everyday, non-pragmatic, communication.
Список литературы
1. Амири, Л. П. Языковая игра в российской и американской рекламе : автореф. дис. ... канд. филол. наук. Ростов-на-Дону, 2007. 21 с.
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3. Ильясова, С. В. Языковая игра в газетном тексте // Журналистика: информационное пространство. Краснодар, 2001. N 1. С. 58-61.
4. Лопатин, В. В. Рождение слова. Неологизмы и окказиональные образования. М. : Наука, 1973. 152 с.
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4. Lopatin, V. V. Rozhdenie slo-va. Neologizmy i okkazional'nye obrazovanija. M. : Nauka, 1973. 152 s.
5. Popova, T. V. Russkaja neologija i neografija: uchebnoe jelektronnoe tekstovoe izdanie. Ekaterinburg, 2005. 96 s.
6. Sazanec, I. M. Anglijskij gibrid-izm: proizvodnye gibridy : avtoref.
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гибриды : автореф. дис. ... канд. филол. наук. Тула, 2008. 21с.
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dis. ... kand. filol. nauk. Tula, 2008. 21s.
7. Svirenkova, G. A. Angli-cizmy v sovremennom russkom jazyke. Festival' pedagogicheskih idej «Otkrytyj urok». URL : http://festival.1september.ru/ articles/410377/
8. Staheeva, A. V. Abbreviacija: slo-voproizvodstvo i slovotvorchestvo (na materiale russkogo jazyka XX-XXI veka) : avtoref. dis. . kand. filol. nauk. Rostov-na-Donu, 2008. 24 s.
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