¿Nos hacemos un/una selfie con la/el tablet? Cross-Linguistic Lexical Influence, Gender Assignment and Linguistic Policy in Spanish

Abstract

One of the immediate consequences of cross-linguistic lexical influence in languages that have an explicit gender system is the need to assign a gender to newly borrowed terms. In this paper, we analyze gender assignment in two recent technology-related borrowings in Spanish, 'tablet' and 'selfie', paying particular attention to the morphological, phonological and semantic factors that play a role in this process. We explain how these two words have been adopted and adapted by the Spanish language, and how various language institutions have attempted to establish policies to control or limit their use. In so doing, we demonstrate that sociolinguistic factors, such as the attitudes of Spanish language institutions vis-à-vis lexical borrowings from English, can contribute to understanding the phenomenon of the assignment of gender to Anglicisms in Spanish and their integration in the language.