Anglicismos y aculturación en la sociedad Chilena

Abstract

The implementation of the US-inspired neoliberal economic model in Chile four decades ago and the country's participation in the globalization process have led to fundamental societal changes. In fact, the effect of the adoption of this paradigm is reflected in several areas, including that of the use of the language. For this reason, it is interesting for linguists and translators to find out the influence of the English language and American culture on Chilean society. Hence, the objectives of this study were to determine the presence of English loanwords in the press in orderto describe them, determine their frequency of use and infer the causes of their adoption. To achieve these objectives, English borrowings collected from newspapers between January 2003 and December 2009 were classified both manually and semi-automatically. Then these Anglicisms were analyzed from the perspective of their formal characteristics, their frequency of use and the areas of knowledge to which they belonged. English loanwords were found to be adopted rather than adapted; it was also established that they have a strong presence in today's journalistic writing, specifically in economics, computer science, sports and culture. Furthermore, their use is thought to be determined by four main factors: the lack of a counterpart in Spanish, social prestige, linguistic economy and user preference. Finally, it was concluded that the English language and American culture have a significant presence in the Chilean press.