Football: A History of Semantic and Cultural Borrowing

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The word 'anglicism' appeared for the first time in the Grand Dictionnaire ...... (http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_122.pdf). ... [28] Dubois, 'L'emprunt en français', 10–16. [29] Yaguello, Le grand livre de la langue française, 412.
The International Journal of the History of Sport Vol. 26, No. 15, December 2009, 2219–2235

Football: A History of Semantic and Cultural Borrowing [1]

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Me´lanie Bernard-Be´ziade and Michae¨l Attali

Sport is a practice, yet it is also a language conveying the representations of those who structure it and those who employ it. The contribution of numerous English lexical units to the lexicon of other languages in touch with United Kingdom participates in the diffusion of sport and its level of penetration in geographical spaces. France does not escape this phenomenon and its language borrows from its Anglo-Saxon neighbour. Anglicisms have been described in opprobrious terms for a long time by critics who consider them the sign of France’s dependence on the British Empire. Through the analysis of five types of anglicisms (intact, truncated, gallicized, signified and signifier anglicism) and about 60 lexical units, we will identify the privileged forms of borrowings, their origins and the meaning to be attributed to them and thus show the role of sport in general and football in particular in linguistic and cultural diffusion. Une histoire d’emprunt culturel et se´mantique : le football Si le sport est pratique, il est aussi langage ve´hiculant les repre´sentations de ceux qui le structurent et de ceux qui l’emploient. L’apport de nombreux termes anglais dans le lexique des autres langues en contact avec l’Angleterre participe ainsi de la diffusion du sport et de son niveau de pe´ne´tration dans les espaces ge´ographiques. La France n’y e´chappe pas et sa langue emprunte a` sa voisine anglo-saxonne. Les ‘‘anglicismes’’, dont l’expression apparaıˆt en 1687, ont depuis longtemps stigmatise´ les critiques en conside´rant qu’ils seraient le signe d’une de´pendance de la France a` l’empire britannique. A travers l’analyse de cinq types d’anglicismes (anglicisme intact, anglicisme tronque´, anglicisme francise´, anglicisme de signifiant, anglicisme de signifie´) et d’une soixantaine de lexies, nous pre´ciserons les formes d’emprunt privile´gie´es, leurs origines et le sens a` leur attribuer permettant de situer la place du sport en ge´ne´ral et du football en particulier dans la diffusion linguistique et culturelle.

Me´lanie Bernard-Be´ziade, Doctor In Linguistics, 48 rue Voltaire, 33400 TALENCE, France; Michae¨l Attali, Maıˆtre de confe´rences – Universite´ de Grenoble 1, Laboratoire SENS, 1741 rue de la Piscine, 38400 St Martin d’He`res, France. Correspondence to: [email protected] ISSN 0952-3367 (print)/ISSN 1743-9035 (online) ! 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09523360903367677

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Historia de un caso de apropiacio´n sema´ntica y cultural: el fu´tbol El deporte es una pra´ctica, pero tambie´n es lenguaje que expresa las representaciones de los que lo estructuran y los que lo utilizan. La contribucio´n de numerosas unidades le´xicas del ingle´s al le´xico de otros idiomas en contacto con Gran Bretan˜a ha contribuido a la difusio´n del deporte y a su nivel de penetracio´n en los diversos espacios geogra´ficos. Francia no es ajena a este feno´meno y su idioma ha tomado pre´stamos de su vecino anglosajo´n. Durante mucho tiempo los anglicismos han sido descritos en te´rminos infamantes por parte de una crı´tica que los considera signos de la dependencia francesa respecto del Imperio Brita´nico. Mediante el ana´lisis de cinco tipos de anglicismos (intacto, truncado, galicizado, anglicismo significante y significado) y de unas sesenta unidades le´xicas, identificaremos los tipos privilegiados de pre´stamos, sus orı´genes y el significado que se les debe atribuir, poniendo ası´ de relieve el papel del deporte en general y del fu´tbol en particular en la difusio´n cultural y lingu¨´ıstica.

Eine Geschichte des kulturellen und semantischen Anleihens: Fußball Sport ist ein praktisches Handlungsfeld, zugleich ist es auch die Sprache, die die Ausfu¨hrungen derer u¨bermittelt, die ihn strukturieren und ausu¨ben. Der Beitrag zahlreicher englischer lexikalischer Einheiten in die Lexika anderer Sprachen, die mit Großbritannien in Kontakt stehen, tra¨gt zur Ausbreitung des Sports und dem Ausmaß seiner Durchdringung in geographischen Ra¨umen bei. Auch Frankreich entkommt diesem Pha¨nomen nicht und seine Sprache leiht bei seinem angelsa¨chsischen Nachbarn an. Anglizismen sind von Kritikern mit schma¨henden Worten bezeichnet worden, die diese als Zeichen fu¨r die Abha¨ngigkeit Frankreichs vom britischen Empire ansehen. Durch die Analyse fu¨nf verschiedener Typen von Anglizismen (intakt, verku¨rzt, (gallicised), gekennzeichnete und kennzeichnende Anglizismen) und etwa 60 lexikalischer Einheiten werden die bevorzugten Formen der Anleihen, deren Urspru¨nge und Bedeutungen, die ihnen zugeschrieben werden, identifiziert, um somit die Rolle des Sports im Allgemeinen und des Fußballs im Speziellen in linguistischer und kultureller Ausbreitung darzustellen.

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Like any social activity, sport is based on sociocultural exchange, which results in it being analysed more as a product than a state. Far from being fixed, it undergoes many changes over time which prevents it from being considered immutable in its practices, conceptions and speech. In this framework, sport’s origin and areas of expansion provide important clues to explain its development. England has played an important role in this development, a role which extends beyond the area of sports. England’s influence on other countries has been growing since the seventeenth century. It has been felt in the domains of maritime business, exotic travel, customs (dance, clothes, food, card games) and parliamentary and judicial terminology. Nevertheless, beyond practice, representations of practice are permanently marked by British influence. In a context where geopolitics and representations of practice occupy an increasingly important place in international relationships, [2] sport in general, and football in particular, due to its popularity, plays a cultural propaganda role not limited to sports competitions. [3] Sport promotes a way of thinking or talking. Linguistic representations are particularly important within the framework of activities that were first developed in England. Sport is, then, an interesting tool of analysis to understand the role and the influence of British representations, their evolution, even their transformations from the moment they spread beyond national boundaries. While the rules, techniques and forms of activities such as sport have already been studied, [4] the semantic aspects have not been, until now, the aim of detailed investigations. Indeed, if sport is practice, it is also language conveying representations of it. Numerous English terms in the lexicon of other languages spoken in areas in contact with England provide evidence of the spread of sport-related language. Following the industrial and technological revolution of the nineteenth century, England’s dominance spread throughout Europe, leading to the linguistic dominance of English at the beginning of the twentieth century. France did not escape this phenomenon and its language has borrowed from its Anglo-Saxon neighbour. Since the nineteenth century, there has been an increase in borrowings from English in all spheres, despite French reluctance in some circles to go along this route and adoption of measures to stem this tide. [5]

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Thanks to its worldwide dimension and the important place it holds on both sides of the Channel, football has become a field of analysis in which to examine the level of semantic spread. Through the language used in the football, we will analyse current anglicisms, and attempt to explain the origin and the subsequent transformations that reveal processes of cultural identification.

Anglicisms

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Plural Modalities For a long time, anglicisms have been considered the sign of France’s geopolitical dependence on the British Empire. Because the use of anglicisms extends beyond the United Kingdom and forms a worldwide language, they delimit a sphere of influence in competition with French, they have been described in opprobrious terms. For many French authors, anglicisms might be more specifically considered as a symbol of French vocabulary’s lack of power to withstand its expansionist neighbour across the English Channel. Nowadays, the English language plays the role that the French language used to play in the seventeenth century: lingua franca. In spite of several initiatives to counteract its reach, as evidenced after 1937 with the creation of the ‘office de la langue franc¸aise’. After some reorganizations, it became in 2001 ‘la de´le´gation ge´ne´rale a` la langue franc¸aise et aux langues de France (DGLFLF)’. This delegation coordinates the development of lists of lexical items thanks to the ‘commissions ministe´rielles de terminologie et de ne´ologie (CMT)’; they allow, in each ministry, to propose to French speakers some recommendations for the use of terms relative to each sector. The sport CMT was created in 1984, its aim is to find French equivalents to anglicisms in sport. The word ‘anglicism’ appeared for the first time in the Grand Dictionnaire franc¸ais by Mie`ge (1687) with the following definition: ‘Anglicism, an expression proper to the English.’ [6] This definition dating back over three centuries has evolved little and has been the object of only minor adjustments: for example, Pergnier [7] suggested three definitions: an anglicism is (1) An English word or an English form met occasionally in an utterance in French. [. . .]; (2) An English term or a term influenced by English, whose frequency of use is enough to be considered as being integrated (however, well or poorly) into the French lexicon and listed in dictionaries and glossaries [. . .]; (3) An English word used wrongly in place of the correct French word. The first two definitions concern the language events themselves, whereas the third implies a judgement in respect to its correct usage (anglicisms are indexed for correction by various language commissions). An anglicism thus indicates a lexical unit [8] of which the signifier and/or the signified originates in the English language. The difficulty of this definition is the Saussurean dichotomy ‘signifier and signified’ because to borrow from another language does not necessarily mean borrowing the signifier (the sound or written word) and the signified (the meaning). Partially following Mareschal’s typology, [9] we will examine five types of anglicisms for this study:

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The intact Anglicism. An English form and its meaning (or one of its meanings) are imported into French and adopted as is with the referent they stand for (e.g. football); The truncated Anglicism. An English form and its meaning are borrowed with the referent they stand for but the signifier is truncated when it enters into French (e.g. foot or it has already been truncated in English (e.g. penalty); The gallicized anglicism. That can be divided into two categories: The gallicized anglicism by adaptation. An English word is imported with its referent and integrated into the French linguistic system and undergoes graphic and morphological adaptations with the aim of giving it a ‘French appearance’ (e.g. tackle became tacle); The gallicized anglicism by derivation. It corresponds to lexical units whose root keeps the English form and are derived thanks to French affixes (e.g. dribbleur); The signifier Anglicism. Only the form is English, neither the meaning nor the referent are borrowed from English (e.g. footing); The signified anglicism. It comes from the attribution of an English meaning to a French word which already exists into the French language, it is due to the same morphological features that two lexical units can possess, it exists a lot of lexical units that have the same form in English and in French but not the same meaning (for example, the meaning of amateur as ‘someone who takes part in a sport and without being paid for it’ is due to the influence of the English ‘amateur’, in French, amateur means, in its first sense, someone who likes a particular thing, such as ‘amateur d’art’ or ‘amateur de vin’.) Origins of anglicisms. If anglicisms represent evidence of relations between France and England, they are a testimony to the familiarity of French people with the AngloSaxon world, the discovery of a foreign country occurring almost always through its language: ‘relations which have been established between two peoples since the sixteenth century have brought into French an uninterrupted wave of anglicisms.’ [10] The history of sport in France [11] and of football [12] in particular reveals the role of England in its development and codification. We know that through contact between nations, people’s vocabulary also undergoes a change because of mutual exchange between the languages. [13] Language is tied to the history of the society and culture in which it is used. Taking advantage of economic exchange, the British controlled for a long time and of British importance in international relationships, the British also exported a lifestyle, cultural practices, a vision of the world via the language. The English exported football into France with its characteristic vocabulary and French people have, for the most part, adopted and adapted this vocabulary. In 1920, when writing about English terms used in the French language, Bonnaffe´ [14] already stressed the importance of journalists and the integration of linguistic borrowings [These] words are collected on site, in England and the US, by tourists, writers, business men, traders, and more importantly journalists, professional news recorders, word inventors, who give them their concrete form under which they

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will penetrate the public domain through the press, books, the theatre and print people’s memories.

As Le Bidois [15] also stresses: ‘no one will deny that the French press offers to English words an extremely favourable culture medium’. The origin of these borrowings often comes from the written language, especially the written press. From 1924, the first generation of sports journalists, fixated as they were on Anglo-Saxon culture, [16] turned naturally to their colleagues in other countries within the international association of sports correspondents, who they considered the most qualified in this field. Revealing their admiration for the performances of the British athletes, they imported the specific vocabulary of the sport without trying to gallicize it so as not to run the risk of misrepresenting it. Following these two linguists’ assertions, we thoroughly analysed articles dealing with football and extracted from L’E´quipe, a daily newspaper, in order to identify the origin and the nature of those anglicisms that are still the most frequently used today. As for L’Equipe, it is a national reference [17] in terms of sport and provides a good representation of the vocabulary used in the media. The Data The corpus was collected by extracting the English words from the sport newspaper L’Equipe between 14 and 30 August 2004 and 8 and 24 August 2008. These periods, corresponding to the Athens and Beijing Olympics Games, the French national football championship and, moreover, a part of other European championships, are of particular interest in so far as they provide a concentration of sports analyses. They thus offer a wide corpus of anglicisms, with on the one hand the Olympics Games, where the two official languages are French and English [18] and on the other, the French and European championships that use their national language with a lot of English borrowings. [19] The five tables below present the different types of anglicisms found in the analysed corpus, and we have given for each of them the date they were introduced into the French language. Nevertheless, we should specify that these dates are only approximate because the words for which we can indicate the exact date of their introduction into the language are few. Mostly, we have to be satisfied with an approximation and we must not forget that the first appearance of a word in a book is not always the date of its birth. [20] This approach leads us to classify anglicisms in a temporal interval and thus to establish hypotheses about cultural representations and the semantic analyses of the latter through the course of the history of the French language. The comparison between the meaning of the term used and the original meaning in English will be an important clue of semantic transformations in the language of sport. The study of a newspaper allows work on an authentic and living document, but the constitution of a corpus based on a daily newspaper does not provide an

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exhaustive list of anglicisms. It provides insight, nevertheless, into the attitudes adopted by the journalists and their perception of the subject. In terms of methodology, we did not take into account proper names which correspond to intrinsic realities in each country nor intact anglicisms because they become integrated into French structure: for example, intact anglicisms like the adjective ‘international’. Its morphological construction ‘inter þ nominal root (i.e. the basic element in a word which remains after all affixes have been removed, and which may form the basis of a number of related words) þ al’ is a usual structure of French; moreover, the French language possesses ‘nation’ and ‘national’, so, if the lexical unit when it appeared in 1802 could be perceived as an anglicism, its integration to French morphology has since hidden its origin and only scholars or linguists are able to recognize it as a borrowing. Intact anglicisms. The intact anglicisms (see Table 1) found in articles relating to football have been borrowed by the French language uninterrupted since the beginning of the nineteenth century, with a paroxysm between 1850 and 1950 (30 anglicisms borrowed out of 43). [21] These anglicisms are usually named ‘obviousness’ [22] in linguistics, that is to say the borrowing was both done at the level of the signifier and of the signified, and both come from the English language. But the semantic evolution of these lexical units did not occur in the same way in the two languages. For example, the ‘bookmaker’ is the person who receives bets on racetracks, then, by extension, everyone who takes bets in sports, whereas in Anglo-Saxon countries, the word ‘bookmaker’ extends well beyond the setting of sports. In this context, we notice that the integration of an intact anglicism corresponds to a restriction of the meaning of the term used, usually limited to its original meaning in the English language. This situation leads to the assumption that even though the use of sports terminology comes from intercultural exchanges, it does not assume all its aspects. This temporal difference is found in the meaning used with numerous distortions revealing either a model of British particularity or a misunderstanding of the borrowed language. Indeed, using English to talk about sports tends to convey an identifying message for the one who uses it appropriately, adding prestige to his speech and his person. We know that, in all languages, there are transfers of words or sentences that come from a particular domain and can be used in another. It is certain that sport is a socio-cultural phenomenon which has huge importance in our societies today, and the connections between sports and other domains show a constant interpenetration of their respective vocabulary. Sportsmen are often compared to movie stars with the use of expressions such as casting, star, show or superman, and football, due to its vast diffusion, increases the tenor and the function. The strong impact of Anglo-Saxon culture on French culture manifests itself in borrowing anglicisms in their original form and meanings; these new lexical units, which accompany cultural and social changes, mark an evolution in the French language, a transformation and an enrichment of it. The semantic analysis of the expression ‘fair play’, which usually

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M. Bernard-Be´ziade and M. Attali Table 1 Intact anglicisms Date of introduction in French [25]

From the English

Un bookmaker

1855

Bookmaker

Un boss

1869

Un break

1960

Un casting

1972

Un challenge

1884

Un club

1733

Un coach

1910

Un derby

1876

Un dribble

1913

Le fair play

1856

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Word

Le fighting spirit

Re´cent

Le football

1872

Le goal-average

1926

Groggy

1910

Un handicap

1839

Un head coach

Re´cent

Un hold-up

1925

Une interview

1887

Un joker

1912

Un/une leader

1822

Un manager

1857

Le marketing

1944

Example

«. . . Arsenal reste le favori des bookmakers.» 14 Aug. 2004 (p. 22) Boss «Quand j’ai rencontre´ le boss . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 27) Break «Ils avaient fait le break . . .» 23 Aug. 2008 (p. 22) Casting «. . . chacun semblait anticiper l’erreur de casting . . .» 21 Aug. 2004 (p. 23) Challenge « . . . relever le challenge de Manchester United et Chelsea . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 27) Club «C¸a fait deux fois qu’on joue contre des clubs qui e´voluent tre`s bas.» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 20) Coach « . . . le coach aime bien que l’on s’en tienne au cadre.» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 24) Derby « . . . a` dix jours du derby . . .» 21 Aug. 2008 (p. 21) Dribble « . . . un dribble emberlificote´ de Ceara . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 20) Fair play « . . . il faut alors lui remettre un prix du fair-play.» 11 Aug. 2008 (p. 21) Fighting spirit « . . . comble´ par le fighting spirit de l’e´quipe . . .» 15 Aug. 2004 (p. 21) Football « . . . le football e´tait alors conside´re´ dans sa cite´.» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 24) Goal average «Faire 8e quand on a un goal-average . . .» 14 Aug. 2004 (p. 17) Groggy « . . . le Bre´silien groggy . . .» 23 Aug. 2004 (p. 18) Handicap « . . . un handicap sur le plan sportif.» 21 Aug. 2004 (p. 23) Head coach « . . . il est de´sormais le head coach.» 14 Aug. 2004 (p. 22) Hold up «On peut toujours faire un hold-up sur un match.» 14 Aug. 2004 (p. 18) Interview «Dans son interview . . .» 22 Aug. 2008 (p. 21) Joker «Il a ajoute´ deux matches joker.» 23 Aug. 2008 (p. 20) Leader « . . . l’ASM est un curieux leader provisoire . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 22) Manager « . . . le manager ge´ne´ral.» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 24) Marketing « . . . ce qui ressemble a` une conside´rable ope´ration marketing.» 19 Aug. 2008 (p. 18) (continued )

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Table 1 (Continued ) Date of introduction in French [25]

From the English

Un match

1827

Match

Out Un / une outsider

1891 1859

Out Outsider

Une performance

1839

Performance

Le punch

1909

Punch

Le record

1882

Record

Un remake

1946

Remake

Un reporter

1828

Reporter

Le score

1896

Score

Le self-control

1883

Self-control

Le soccer

1913

Soccer

Le sponsor

1972

Sponsor

Le sponsoring

1974

Sponsoring

Un sprint

1895

Sprint

Le staff

1944

Staff

Le standing

1914

Standing

Une star

1919

Star

Un stress

1950

Stress

Un supporter

1930

Supporter

Le suspense

1951

Suspense

Un tabloı¨d

1933

Tabloid

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Word

Example «Dans un match tre`s muscle´ . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 16) «Les recrues out...» 14 Aug. 2004 (p. 18) «On part comme le gros outsider . . .» 25 Aug. 2008 (p. 23) « . . . sa remarquable performance personnelle . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 23) « . . . son punch en font de´ja` une attraction . . .» 14 Aug. 2004 (p. 19) «Le record d’affluence a failli eˆtre battu.» 16 Aug. 2004 (p. 20) « . . . un remake de la dernie`re finale . . .» 26 Aug. 2004 (p. 9) « . . . annonce le reporter britannique.» 26 Aug. 2004 (p. 19) «Rapidement mene´s au score . . . » 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 22) « . . . garder son self-control . . .» 16 Aug. 2004 (p. 20) « . . . elles ont domine´ la plane`te soccer.» 27 Aug. 2004 (p. 8) « . . . l’attention que lui porte les sponsors . . .» 14 Aug. 2008 (p. 18) « . . . un avantage au niveau du sponsoring . . .» 21 Aug. 2004 (p. 23) « . . . une se´rie de six sprints de 40 me`tres . . .» 14 Aug. 2008 (p. 22) « . . . faute de renforts juge´s satisfaisants par le staff technique . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 21) « . . . une seconde pe´riode plus conforme a` son standing.» 15 Aug. 2004 (p. 17) «Il a tout pour eˆtre l’une des stars de la saison.» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 27) « . . . aucun stress particulier . . . » 23 Aug. 2008 (p. 20) « . . . les supporters du PSG n’attendront pas . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 20) «Elle n’a pas laisse´ de place au suspense.» 14 Aug. 2008 (p. 20) « . . . la presse tabloı¨d . . .» 22 Aug. 2008 (p. 22)

refers to sportsmanship, reveals that it is used in French in other fields. This expression stands for conformity to the established rules. There is even a comite´ du fair-play (fair play commitee) in France. This word does not need to be translated

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because it represents an ideal, a perfect behaviour that does not need to be specified: the meaning is known by the majority of French people. To retain its character as a living language, the French language must constantly be enriched with new words and expressions, [23] ‘it is undeniable that our contemporaries prefer more and more certain English expressions in their daily communications: they seem incomparably more expressive and in any case more ‘up to date’ than their French equivalents’. Often associated with modernity [24] and youth, the domain of sports is very marked by this last tendency which is only increasing its social and symbolic function. Table 1 makes no claims to be exhaustive, but, nevertheless, it represents a sample that reveals some basic tendencies. We notice in particular that most of the intact anglicisms were introduced during the first period of exportation of football into France. [26] It constitutes a legacy of the practice under consideration, somewhat subjected to some transformations but still allowing identification of its nature. Some of them appeared more recently and correspond to changes in the field (i.e. sponsor) or football organization (i.e. head coach). ‘To be football’ is to master its rules but also its codes of which language makes up one of the elements of promotion. It underlines its universality that constitutes one of the priorities of the institutions that run it [27] while showing its differences with other sports that are not as easily recognizable according to countries. Truncated anglicisms. Truncated anglicisms (see Table 2) also have their place in the vocabulary of football. We know that the English language possesses numerous ellipses, truncations, abbreviations of long words, amputations of compounds while keeping just one term of the compound, and clear and concise vocabulary. Purists and defenders of the norm recommend the use of periphrases to represent a concept already borrowed by the French language in its English form: for example, ‘a free kick taken from a corner of the field and given when one of the players on the opposing team has kicked the ball behind the goal line’ defines what is meant in English by corner. This expression was taken into French for its conciseness and its periphrasis Table 2 Truncated anglicisms Date of introduction in French

From the English

Un corner Un fan

1897 1951

Corner kick Fanatic

Le foot

1924

Football

Un penalty Pro Un test

1902 1881 1893

Penalty kick Professional Mental test

Word

Example «. . . de´posait un corner . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 23) «Nasri a vite conquis ses nouveaux fans.» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 27) «. . . on doit eˆtre une ville de foot . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 24) «. . . un troisie`me penalty . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 16) «Ils sont pros . . .» 21 Aug. 2008 (p.21) «C’e´tait un bon test.» 21 Aug. 2008 (p. 18)

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(i.e. a roundabout way of saying something) ‘coup de pied de coin’ seems to be used only by some obstinate Gauls. The French language has even developed this particularity of the English language in sports, by truncating many anglicisms, and even giving them a typically French meaning: ‘le foot’ does not mean part of the leg but the sport in which two teams of 11 players try to send into the opponents’ goal a round ball with their feet, their head or any other part of the body except the hand or arm. This word, while considered borrowed, designates a particular reality to French speakers. This semantic evolution marks a process of cultural identification: even though the word comes from the truncated form of an English word, the signified is typically French. The linguistic phenomenon of truncating, by apocope (loss of pronunciation of the final syllable or letter of a word, e.g. photo[graph]) or apheresis (omission of a syllable at the beginning of a word, e.g. [auto]bus), represents a semantic appropriation of a new lexical unit produced by borrowing. It reveals a double instrumentalization of the English language in the domain of sports used by the French: both practical (English words are shorter) and serving to set those French people using English expressions instead of their French equivalents apart from French purists. Gallicized anglicisms. Gallicized anglicisms (see Table 3) are a type of anglicisms in constant evolution, following the needs of the French language. They allow the creation of new lexical units relating to the same lexical field. As for the vocabulary of Table 3 Gallicized anglicisms

Word

Date of introduction in French

Booster

1962

Une compe´tition

1759

Un de´briefing

1982

Un dribbleur

1895

Forfait

1829

Un footballeur Footballistique

1892 1988

Un manageur Pe´naliser

Re´cent 1902

Stopper

1841

Un tacle

1907

From the English

Example

«. . . ce qui est arrive´ a` leur copain peut les booster comme produire l’effet inverse.» 23 Aug. 2008 (p. 19) Competition «. . . au meˆme stade de la compe´tition . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 16) Brief «. . . au de´briefing collectif . . .» 23 Aug. 2008 (p. 20) Dribbler «. . . Thorstein est un peu moins dribbleur . . . .» 23 Aug. 2008 (p. 20) Forfeit «Forfait mercredi avec l’e´quipe de France . . .» 22 Aug. 2008 (p. 22) Footballer «le footballeur Thalassis . . .» 14 Aug. 2004 (p. 3) Football «. . . sa de´clinaison footballistique . . .» 16 Aug. 2004 (p. 20) Manager «Le manageur italien . . .» 12 Aug. 2008 (p. 20) Penalize «Et on a ainsi pe´nalise´ l’OL et les autres clubs franc¸ais.» 23 Aug. 2004 (p. 18) Stop «. . . jusqu’a` ce qu’il stoppe un coup franc . . .» 23 Aug. 2004 (p. 18) Tackle «Il s’agit d’un tacle propre . . .» 11 Aug. 2008 (p. 21) Boost

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football, we have, for example, the nouns footballeur/footballeuse (based on masculine/ feminine gender -eur -euse), the adjective footballistique (based on an analogy with journalistique or touristique). While keeping its morphological root, the word football created derivatives, [28] ‘integration of the foreign term is definitively completed when a range of derivatives develops from this word, formed with French affixes . . .’. This phenomenon of lexical enrichment of the language, by the creation of new lexical units based on borrowing, marks a transformation of thought and an appropriation of a new cultural phenomenon, a cultural identification to the French language by the use of typically French affixes. Brunot’s assertion, published in the foreword of the Dictionnaire des anglicismes at the beginning of the century is thus invalidated, that he considers [that] a day will come [. . .] when we will want to look closely at our borrowings, study them by periods or subjects, a day when we will try to find out how come at a certain moment in time French thought was unable to be expressed except in foreign signs.

The French language is not expressed only in foreign signs, it uses them to be enriched, to develop the communicative needs of its society and thus create a new cultural identification. [29] ‘When a foreign word – even a proper name – gives to the language derivatives by adding a prefix or, especially, a suffix, it means that the borrowing is well integrated, at the point of becoming a derivational base outside its initial context.’ In this study we measure the importance of linguistic interpenetrations because sport in general, and football in particular, provides a rich source of examples due to the homologous nature of the practice of sport. It becomes thus an instrument of the spread of anglicisms which can extend subsequently beyond the restricted field of sports. By participating in the acceptance of this language form, because it seems natural when it deals with sports and when it constitutes a historical custom, it participates in the transformation of the current linguistic trends. Signified anglicisms. Signified anglicisms (see Table 4) are the most interesting to study at the semantic level because this type of anglicism consists in giving an already existing lexical unit in the French language a new meaning as it occurs in the English language and used by an English lexical unit. It is due to the similar morphological characteristics that two lexical units can possess. Indeed, many lexical units exist which have the same form in French and English, but they do not always have the same meaning in the two languages. Due to the phenomenon of languages in contact, the signified of an English lexical unit is going to ‘rub off’ on a French lexical unit; this type of borrowing only concerns the signified, so it is very difficult to discern but it testifies to a strong linguistic and cultural interpenetration between these two languages. With the English language as the intermediary, the signified Anglicism enriches the French language, but imperceptibly: the influence of the English language is only present at the level of the signified, the signifier adapts itself

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completely to French language structure, so its presence is not always obvious, but yet a fertile source of data ‘while all dictionaries identify the word football as an anglicism, they don’t make mention of expressions such as arrie`re, avant, ´equipe, in their sport vocabulary’. [30] Because the form of these anglicisms is integrated into French language structure, only with detailed knowledge of the semantic content, of the history of the lexical unit and of the borrowed language can these words and phrases be recognized as coming semantically from the English language.

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Signifier anglicisms. However, the French language also introduces some ambiguities, whereas the truncated, gallicized and signifier anglicisms characterize a cultural identity: every individual maintains a dialectical relationship with the word he utters: the speaker, as a human-being, born at a certain time and at a given moment in history is preceded by language, as he is by all socio-historic objects and institutions, which fundamentally determines his relationship with the world. He receives the language, and as Sartre said about freedom, he receives it in a different way depending if he was born in Passy or Billancourt. On the other hand and at the same time, he appropriates and internalizes this language which shapes and determines him. [32]

The signifier anglicisms represent a specific case of anglicisms. They possess two characteristics: the lexical units have a French signified different from the English Table 4 Signified anglicisms Date of introduction in French

From the English

Amateur

1833

Amateur

Un entraıˆneur

1884

Entraıˆner

1828

Un entraıˆnement

1885

Une finale

1895

Un finaliste [31]

1924

Professionnel

1842

Une qualification

1840

Qualifier

1840

Word

Example

«Pensionnaire du championnat de France amateur . . .» 11 Aug. 2008 (p. 22) Train «. . . l’entraıˆneur bre´silien . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 16) Train «Puisqu’ils jouent souvent comme ils s’entraıˆnent . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 24) Train «. . . l’entraıˆnement avec le Bayern de Munich . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 25) Final «Pour pouvoir honore´ ce rendez-vous aux vrais airs de finale . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 16) Finalist «. . . finaliste du Mondial des moins de 20 ans . . .» 22 Aug. 2008 (p. 15) Professional «. . .de pouvoir disputer demain soir son 493e match professionnel . . .» 22 Aug. 2008 (p. 21) Qualification «. . . leur de´but de campagne de qualification.» 19 Aug. 2008 (p. 18) Qualify «Argentine et Bre´sil ont souffert pour se qualifier . . .» 17 Aug. 2008 (p. 16)

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Word

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Un coaching

Date of introduction in French

From the English

Re´cent

Instruction

Un footing [35]

1892

Jogging

Le pressing

1950

Pressure

Le speaker

1904

Announcer

Example «. . . pour le coaching en cours . . .» 18 Aug. 2008 (p. 24) «Il effectuera un footing aujourd’hui . . .» 14 Aug. 2008 (p. 21) «. . . le pressing de Monaco l’a broye´ . . .» 15 Aug. 2004 (p. 17) «. . . le speaker n’annonce pas . . .» 14 Aug. 2008 (p. 19)

signified or else the signifier does not exist in English. In reality, there are called ‘false anglicisms’, [33] that is to say there are lexical units composed of English morphemes but neither the referent nor the signified exists in English. They function as mythologies [34] aiming to introduce a French reality in an English form to intensify its legitimacy at least symbolically. An English form would be enough to assure the support of a wide public, in particular young people, without arguing the truthfulness and the meaning. Table 5 presents the signifier anglicisms found in our corpus. To flesh out this type of anglicism, we can mention recordman or recordwoman (record-holder in English). Conclusion This study highlights a tendency that is important but has been little studied in current linguistics: semantic and cultural borrowing. Sport, and football in particular, is a tool of diffusion of language and notably of anglicisms thanks to the press, but ‘to borrow a lexical unit from a foreign language’ does not inform the real modalities of the borrowing (signified, signifier, referent). Through the analysis of five types of anglicisms and about 60 lexical units collected from a sport newspaper, we studied their origin and their nature as well as the evolution, even the semantic transformations allowing us to understand the status and the influence of United Kingdom in cultural representations. It turns out that sport has been identified by a particular structured language since the second half of the nineteenth century and which has seen successive adjustments up until today. Beyond its morphological integration into the borrowing language, the language of sport undergoes semantic transformations over time which provides a process of cultural identification. The French language borrows from the English language, then these lexical units borrowed evolve in a different way in each language as a function of the needs of the speakers and of the instrumentalization they make of it, a lexical unit can change its lexical field or can refer to several lexical fields. This study allowed us to understand the semantic evolution of the lexical units

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presented, the borrowing does not establish an end in itself, each living language must develop its anglicisms but it also has to watch their appropriation within French society because using the English language in sport conveys a representation and a message of identity. Each language conveys its cultural representations, the Spanish language is an interesting example to study because this latter possesses a singular tradition in the anglicisms borrowings: it borrows anglicisms directly from the English but it also adopts anglicisms from French. Pratt [36] found this intervention of French in the introduction of English lexical units because these latter adopted some linguistic characteristics absent in English and present in French. Indeed, we notice that some signifier anglicisms, created in French with English elements, are borrowed by the Spanish language (it is the case of recordman) underlining the internationalization of sports language structured by successive borrowings in the languages of the countries in which the practices spread. This has contributed to the globalization of sport via the actual practice with shared rules throughout the world but also thanks to shared perception media of which language is the main vehicle. Notes [1] [2] [3] [4]

[5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]

Thanks to Jacqueline Thomas for reviewing an early version of this essay. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Beck, Scoring for Britain: International football and international politics 1900–1939, 272–83. Basket-ball was recently the subject of a colloquium examining the nature of intercultural exchanges between both sides of the Atlantic Ocean: Archambault, Artiaga, Bosc, Double Jeu. Histoire du basket-ball entre France et Ame´riques, and more generally Riess, City games: The evolution of American urban society and the rise of sports. Crystal, English as a global language, and for the French language, Tournier, Les mots anglais du franc¸ais. Mackenzie, Les relations de l’Angleterre et de la France d’apre`s le vocabulaire I. Les infiltrations de la langue et de l’esprit franc¸ais: les anglicismes franc¸ais, 108. Pergnier, Les anglicismes: danger ou enrichissement pour la langue franc¸aise, 19–20. The lexical unit corresponds to an item retained together as a chunk, which is called a «memorized lexical unit» (Tournier, 1988). Mareschal, Contribution a` l’e´tude compare´e de l’anglicisation en Europe francophone et au Que´bec, 67–77. Ho¨fler, Dictionnaire des anglicismes, V. Poyer «L’institutionnalisation du sport (1880–1914)» in P. Te´tart, Histoire du sport en France du Second Empire au re´gime de Vichy. Cox, Vamplew, Russell, Encyclopedia of British Football Publisher. Weinreich, Languages in contact: Findings and problems. Bonnaffe´, Dictionnaire des anglicismes, IX. Le Bidois, Les mots trompeurs ou le de´lire verbal, 253. Marchand, Les de´fricheurs de la presse sportive, 16. Andreff, E´conomie du sport, 107. The official languages of the IOC are French and English. At all Sessions, simultaneous interpretation must be provided into French, English, German, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. In the case of divergence between the French and English texts of the Olympic Charter and

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[19] [20] [21]

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[22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35]

[36]

M. Bernard-Be´ziade and M. Attali any other IOC document, the French text shall prevail unless expressly provided otherwise in writing. (http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_122.pdf). Rethacker, La fabuleuse histoire du foot, 23. Nyrop, Grammaire historique de la langue franc¸aise, 3-Formation des mots, 9. Bernard, Les anglicismes dans le sport en langue franc¸aise: modes d’inte´gration et aspects sociolinguistiques, 328–9. Beaujot, ‘Anglicismes et anglomaniaques’, 85–93. Walter, L’aventure des mots franc¸ais venus d’ailleurs, 192. Holt, Sport and the British. A modern history. Rey, Dictionnaire historique de la langue franc¸aise; Tournier, Les mots anglais du franc¸ais; Ho¨fler, Dictionnaire des anglicismes. Eisenberg, Lanfranchi, Mason, Wahl, FIFA 1904–2004. Le sie`cle du football. Wagg, Giving the game away. Football, politics and culture on five continents. Dubois, ‘L’emprunt en franc¸ais’, 10–16. Yaguello, Le grand livre de la langue franc¸aise, 412. MacKenzie, Les relations de l’Angleterre et de la France, 47. The English finalist, for example, ‘player or runner who acts in a final trial’, seems, in the form finaliste, to be a French word. See Orr ‘Les anglicismes du vocabulaire sportif’, 303. Porcher, ‘le sociologique dans le linguistique’, 6–10. Spence, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un anglicisme?’, 323–34. Barthes, Mythologies. In French, ‘footing’ has been created based on the English word ‘foot’, to define a sports pace; the lexical item ‘footing’ does not exist in English. See Guilbert, ‘Anglomanie et vocabulaire technique’, 281. Pratt, El anglicismo en el espan˜ol peninsular contempora´neo. Madrid: Gredos, 1980.

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