Bearing in mind that loanwords are the second most frequent form of lexical innovation in Spanish and that there is plenty of evidence of these new words in the written press, a survey was carried out among journalists to inquire about their participation in the adoption of foreign words and the motivations they claimed for using them. In order to achieve this goal, journalists were asked about the reasons they had for using loanwords and how relevant they thought these reasons were, their self-attributed importance in the incorporation of foreign words into journalistic texts, and the most prolific newspaper sections in terms of loanword use. According to the results, a wide variety of motivations, which included filling lexical-cultural gaps and the widespread use of loanwords, were determined. Journalists reported that they tended to avoid using loanwords and that the sections in which they used these lexical items most frequently were Science and Technology, Economics and International. The fact that journalists attached great importance to their own decisions regarding the use or non-use of loanwords in the press was also determined.
Keywords:
journalist, loanword, reason for use, questionnaire
Gerding Salas, C., Cañete-González, P., Adam, C., & Blanco Correa, O. E. (2019). Journalists and their responsibility to incorporate loanwords into spanish. Boletín De Filología, 54(1), pp. 231–254. Retrieved from https://anuariocdh.uchile.cl/index.php/BDF/article/view/53543
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