Anglicisms in online German newspapers and magazines. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of articles in ‘Die Welt’, ‘Der Spiegel’, and ‘Der Stern’ in February 2016

Abstract

Needless to say, words originating in English largely influence other languages. As postulated by Plümer [2000, p. 28], since the nineteenth century English has become the main donor language for German and due to the ongoing influx of Anglicisms used in German both in Fachsprache, i.e. German for specific purposes and on a daily basis, lexical interference between the two languages increases. Some linguists oppose the excessive use of words originating in English postulating that as a consequence, German may become a peripheral language, whereas others posit that it indicates openness to world and language development. The study focuses on the application of Anglicisms in German newspapers in February 2016. The corpus encompasses 90 articles in online versions of three newspapers, viz. Die Welt, Der Spiegel and Der Stern, structured into three categories, be it Beauty, Politics, and IT. Every category covered thirty parallel topics, in order to arrive at a succinct yet comprehensive summary of the total ratio of Anglicisms. The article was divided into four main categories, i.e. theoretical framework, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, and concluding remarks.