Table of contents

Table of  contents  0

List  of Figures  0

1  Introduction  1

1.1  Procedure of the work  1

2  Contact linguistics  2

2.1  History of English - German language contact  3

2.2  Anglicisms  3

2.2.1  Code-switching/-mixing and borrowings  4

2.2.2  Reasons for the usage of Anglicisms  6

2.3  Internationalisms  7

2.4  The study of linguistic landscapes  8

3  The survey  8

3.1  The city of Dresden and the two neighbourhoods examined  8

3.2  Aims of the survey  9

3.3  Method  10

3.4  Results  10

3.4.1  Overall findings  10

3.4.2  Shop types  13

3.4.3  How is language contact realized?  13

Script  formation on bilingual signs  13

Pictograms   15

Word  plays and creativity  16

Other  interesting findings  18

4  Conclusion  18

4.1  Results of the work  18

4.2  Open problems and outlook  19

Appendix   21

Bibliography   32

Literature   32

Articles   33

Internet  Sources  33

List  of Figures  

Figure  1: Total number of shop signs (n 180)  

Figure  2: Shop signs on Alaunstraße(n 105)  

Figure  3: Shop signs on Pragerstraße (n 75)  

1 Introduction

„Douglas - Come in and find out, or: Douglas - Kommen Sie rein und finden sie

wieder heraus.“ ¹ This translation reflects the disastrous outcome of the study by Endmark GmbH - a German business for creative brand names - on the comprehension

of English advertisement claims in Germany ² . All in all twelve brand names were tested for their comprehension potential and the results were striking. Ten out of twelve English slogans could not be properly understood by more than 50% of the German target group aging 14 to 49 years. Douglas shortly after that study changed its slogan to:

“Douglas macht das Leben schöner” ³ .

One might think shop owners know it better by now but as the following study will show still today there is a big number of shops having English or English-German names and/or slogans.

The purpose of the study is to examine the linguistic landscapes of two urban shopping streets in Dresden. The core of this paper is the thesis, that due to its multicultural flair and its many privately-owned shops Alaunstraße will show a more diverse, productive and creative use of English. This thesis will be evaluated with the three core questions: 1) How many monolingual English and multilingual English - (Language other than English) shop signs can be found in the two streets? 2) Do specific types of shops use specific language patterns? 3)How is language contact realized?

1.1 Procedure of the work

After the introduction in the first chapter, chapter two is focussing on contact linguistics. In this chapter the history of German - English language contact is portrayed and the concept of Anglicisms and the study of linguistic landscapes are being explained. The third chapter is devoted to the survey on shop signs in Dresden. Aims, method and results are presented and a conclusion is then drawn in chapter four. The last chapter also gives inspiration for possible further studies on this topic.

¹ Endmark GmbH: http://www.presseportal.de/meldung/477837/

² Endmark GmbH: http://www.presseportal.de/meldung/477837/

³ Douglas: http://www.douglas.de/douglas/

1

2 Contact linguistics

There is no one clear definition of language contact. A very basic and simple definition is given by Thomason: “...language contact is the use of more than one language in the same place at the same time.” (2001: 1) Winford specifies this statement and gives various degrees of language contact, starting at the situation of language maintenance including borrowing situations (casual, moderate, intense) and convergence situations (see 2003:22f.). As a second stage of language contact he defines language shift which implies always a weaker language and as a third stage of language contact he defines

language creations which includes pidgins and creoles (see ibid.) ⁴ . Starting at stage one the linguistic results of language contact range from lexical borrowing to structural borrowing, to moderate and heavy structural and lexical diffusion, to moderate and heavy substratum interference to the creation of pidgins and creoles (see ibid.). He focuses on “...the people speaking the respective languages who have contact with each other and who resort to varying forms of mixture of elements from the languages involved.” (ibid.) The possible results of language contact depend on internal linguistic and external social and psychological factors, e.g. the similarity of the languages involved, the length of the language contact or the power and prestige relationships between them (see ibid.). The objective of the study of language contact he defines as the following: “Its objective is to study the varied situations of contact between languages, the phenomena that result, and the interaction and external ecological factors in shaping these outcomes.” (Winford 2003: 5).

Loveday lists six outcomes of language contact, i.e. borrowing, creative change and adaptation, Code-switching, code-mixing, hybridization, acronaming (see Loveday 1996: 78). He also states that “there are problems with the definition and recognition of contact phenomena which are not already codified in loan-word dictionaries but which abound in advertising and other contexts. In such cases, orthographic and phonetic assimilation play an important role in identification, as does the extent of community acceptability.” (ibid.) In this study we will later see, that there are words used that are not codified in Görlach’s Dictionary of European Anglicisms (2001) but that still have to be analyzed. In most of the cases the examination will focus on orthographic and phonetic assimilation according to Loveday’s conclusion.

⁴ For a complete overview on the stages of language contact see the table in Winford 2003:23 and a very similar approach in Loveday 1996: 13ff.

2

2.1 History of English - German language contact

Cultural exchange between Britain and Germany has always been intensive - it dates back to the fifth century when the Germanic settlers who conquered England came from what is now northern Germany and southern Denmark, and the eighths century when much of Germany was Christianized by Irishmen and Englishmen. (Busse and Görlach 2002: 13)

The same authors then give a list with later stages in the history of language contact that are more recent and that have been even more influential on the German language. So in the eighteenth century English culture, e.g. English literature, theatre plays and gardening as well as English science and technology were heavily admired and copied (see ibid.). British technology would then again play a major role during the Industrial Revolution in the ninetieth century as for example steel production or cloth making (see Busse and Görlach 2002: 14). During the third stage that is described by Busse and Görlach various parts of British social life like sports, breeds of dogs and drinks where at fashion at the end of the nineteenth century in Europe (see ibid.). And when immigration to the U.S. started at the beginning of the twentieth century, American music, dances and cars came into fashion (see ibid.). After the Second World War: The impact of the Anglo-American re-education policy was reflected in newspapers, magazines, plays, films, and popular music. Since the immediate post-war phase the political and cultural orientation towards the United States has led to a broad and steadily growing influx of Anglo-American loanwords. (ibid.)

During the 1990’s the influence of American culture on the German culture grew steadily, globalization being a central scheme facilitated through the internet (see ibid.). Today the situation of language contact between German and English can be described according to Winford as a casual borrowing situation or bilingual mixed languages meaning the incorporation of large portions of an external vocabulary into a maintained grammatical frame (see 2003:22).

2.2 Anglicisms

This paper is based on the definition of Anglicisms by Onysko. Anglicisms according to him are:

...any instance of an English lexical, structural, and phonological element in German that can be formally related to English. This includes a core-area of word-formally salient borrowings, code-switching, and the productive use of English forms in German (semantic changes, hybrids and pseudo-Anglicisms). Furthermore, the term Anglicism also constitutes a borderline area of unmarked

3

borrowings (e.g. Boss, Film, Test, Start) and interference, which is based on word-formal similarity of English and German terms leading to semantic transfer from English to German. (2006: 267)

This definition excludes the broader concept by Busse and Carstensen (1996: 2) that also includes German compounds like Vollbeschäftigung as derived from the English word full employment’ which is often mainly a diachronic speculation. Onysko argues that this view on indirect borrowings, also named calques: “...is actually questioning the fundamental ability of languages to create neologisms out if their own material. [...] This belief denies the existence of productivity within a language.” (2004: 60)

According to Onysko this paper differentiates between direct and indirect borrowing. With the first one being words that keep their original English spelling and are often tried to be pronounced the English way (see Onysko 2004 :60). The latter type of borrowings points at words that are loan renditions or loan creations (see Onysko 2004:60).

For Busse and Görlach only those words are Anglicisms that are “characterized by their foreign spelling, pronunciation, and/or morphology.” (2002: 15) As Onysko already found in his study: “Anglicisms are particularly productive in the creation of hybrid compound nouns (i.e., mixes of German and English elements).” (2004: 62)

2.2.1 Code-switching/-mixing and borrowings

The study is based on code-switching as an important result of language contact since “code-switching has and creates communicative and social meaning, and is in need of an interpretation by [...] analysts.” (Auer 1998: 1) Thomason gives seven mechanisms of contact induced language change: Codeswitching (within a conversation), code alternation (in different contexts), passive familiarity (only understanding not producing), negotiation (adapting to the other person’s language), second-language acquisition strategies, bilingual first-language acquisition, deliberate decision (change of language to be different) (see 2001: 129ff.). For the purpose of this paper we will put the focus on code-switching and -mixing since for shop signs the others are not really applicable.

According to the Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics code-switching can be seen as a switch between language varieties either depending on the situation in

4