PRAGMATICS OF BORROWING WITHIN DISCOURSE (ON THE EXAMPLE OF ENGLISH WORDS IN ITALIAN)

Abstract

The article is concerned with functional pragmatic adaptation of loanwords in the receiving language. The works of our country scientists and foreign researchers who studied the processes of assimilation of loanwords in a new language environment are analyzed. Until recently, linguists tried to describe and structure adopted words only according to lexical semantic schemes. But now they are trying to go over classical researches and to distinguish pragmatic information about the word, which is related with its semantic meaning. Moreover, that regarding to new loanwords, the hierarchy may be changed, and pragmatic information may precede the semantic one entering later in the lexical meaning of the word. The absorption of the borrowed words introduces some specific communicative models, indicating different phases of adaptation of the new word. Since pragmatics considers the relationship between participants of communication and language signs, it is important to define the reasons why foreign words get into different types of discourse. Changing pragmatical sense of the same word in different tipes of discuors can prove this phenomenon. On the example of the Italian language, the author analyses non-linguistic factors that influence the choice by the media of English loanwords to manipulate the consciousness of the addressee. When creating a text, journalists often use labeled vocabulary, in order to raise the prestige of a particular object of discussion, to hide unwanted content of a message and give more importance to insignificant phenomena in society. At the same time, in computer discourse, English words are used primarily to denote new terms and to simplify international communication between programmers, because of this they havn’t got pragmatic component. The same can be said about the business and scientific discourse. Thus, we can conclude that borrowing from English in italian lenguage may change their pragmatic component of lexical meaning, and that the stylistic of discourse is a necessary condition which permeets to acquire additional pragmatic meaning and lose the original one.