Home Linguistics & Semiotics Chapter 13. English direct loans in European football lexis
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Chapter 13. English direct loans in European football lexis

  • Gunnar Bergh and Sölve Ohlander
View more publications by John Benjamins Publishing Company
Search
The Anglicization of European Lexis
This chapter is in the book The Anglicization of European Lexis

Abstract

Football language is arguably the world’s most widespread special language, where English has played – and still plays – a dominant role. The present study reports on the influence of English in terms of direct loans in this field, as manifested in 16 European languages. Based on a set of 25 English football words – dribble, goal, offside, hooligan, etc. – the investigation shows that while direct borrowing is common, there is a great deal of variation between the languages studied, Norwegian exhibiting the highest number of foreign loans and Finnish the lowest. The significance of the resulting patterns is discussed, providing some tentative explanations of the phenomena noted, where linguistic, sociolinguistic and cultural factors are taken into account.

Abstract

Football language is arguably the world’s most widespread special language, where English has played – and still plays – a dominant role. The present study reports on the influence of English in terms of direct loans in this field, as manifested in 16 European languages. Based on a set of 25 English football words – dribble, goal, offside, hooligan, etc. – the investigation shows that while direct borrowing is common, there is a great deal of variation between the languages studied, Norwegian exhibiting the highest number of foreign loans and Finnish the lowest. The significance of the resulting patterns is discussed, providing some tentative explanations of the phenomena noted, where linguistic, sociolinguistic and cultural factors are taken into account.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of contributors vii
  4. Acknowledgements ix
  5. The lexical influence of English on European languages 1
  6. Section I. Exploring Anglicisms
  7. Chapter 1. Fair play to them 27
  8. Chapter 2. Proposing a pragmatic distinction for lexical Anglicisms 43
  9. Chapter 3. Investigating gender variation of English loanwords in German 65
  10. Chapter 4. The collection of Anglicisms 91
  11. Chapter 5. Semi-automatic approaches to Anglicism detection in Norwegian corpus data 111
  12. Chapter 6. Lexicographic description of recent Anglicisms in Serbian 131
  13. Chapter 7. Anglicisms in Armenian 149
  14. Section II. English-induced phraseology
  15. Chapter 8. Phraseology in flux 169
  16. Chapter 9. Multi-word loan translations and semantic borrowings from English in French journalistic discourse 199
  17. Chapter 10. Newly-coined Anglicisms in contemporary Spanish 217
  18. Chapter 11. Der Elefant im Raum… 239
  19. Chapter 12. English influence on Polish proverbial language 261
  20. Section III. Anglicisms in specialized discourse
  21. Chapter 13. English direct loans in European football lexis 281
  22. Chapter 14. Incorporation degrees of selected economics-related Anglicisms in Italian 305
  23. Chapter 15. Anglicisms in the discourse of Alitalia’s bailout in the Italian press 325
  24. Author index 343
  25. Language index 347
  26. Subject index 349
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.174.19ber

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of contributors vii
  4. Acknowledgements ix
  5. The lexical influence of English on European languages 1
  6. Section I. Exploring Anglicisms
  7. Chapter 1. Fair play to them 27
  8. Chapter 2. Proposing a pragmatic distinction for lexical Anglicisms 43
  9. Chapter 3. Investigating gender variation of English loanwords in German 65
  10. Chapter 4. The collection of Anglicisms 91
  11. Chapter 5. Semi-automatic approaches to Anglicism detection in Norwegian corpus data 111
  12. Chapter 6. Lexicographic description of recent Anglicisms in Serbian 131
  13. Chapter 7. Anglicisms in Armenian 149
  14. Section II. English-induced phraseology
  15. Chapter 8. Phraseology in flux 169
  16. Chapter 9. Multi-word loan translations and semantic borrowings from English in French journalistic discourse 199
  17. Chapter 10. Newly-coined Anglicisms in contemporary Spanish 217
  18. Chapter 11. Der Elefant im Raum… 239
  19. Chapter 12. English influence on Polish proverbial language 261
  20. Section III. Anglicisms in specialized discourse
  21. Chapter 13. English direct loans in European football lexis 281
  22. Chapter 14. Incorporation degrees of selected economics-related Anglicisms in Italian 305
  23. Chapter 15. Anglicisms in the discourse of Alitalia’s bailout in the Italian press 325
  24. Author index 343
  25. Language index 347
  26. Subject index 349
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 19.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/z.174.19ber/html
Scroll to top button