Stylistic Motivation in Amharic Media Language Use
Summary
The paper asks why Amharic broadcast and media language so often uses English words where Amharic alternatives exist or could be coined. The authors take a qualitative, descriptive approach. They purposively selected Amharic media programmes on sport, medical science, and science and technology, and from them compiled 1090 bilingual extracts that contain English items. The analysis uses Galinsky's 1963 typology of seven stylistic functions of Anglicisms in German. Following Gentsch, it examines four of those functions, with further detail drawn from Rodríguez González's work on Anglicisms in Spanish.
Three of Galinsky's motivations turn up in the Amharic data:
- Brevity: short English forms replace longer Amharic phrasing.
- Precision: English terms fill gaps where Amharic has no single clear equivalent.
- Variation of expression: journalists alternate English and Amharic names for the same thing so they do not repeat one word tediously.
The study matters because it shows a framework built for German–English contact carrying over to a very different language pair. It also gives functional reasons for code-mixing rather than treating it as noise.
Key points
- The data are 1090 bilingual extracts from Amharic media programmes, chosen by purposive sampling from three domains: sport, medical science, and science and technology.
- The theoretical base is Galinsky's seven stylistic motivations for Anglicisms: local colour, precision, euphemism or disguise, brevity, vividness or metaphor, a comic or playful touch, and one further function. Following Gentsch's thesis on German newspaper language, four of the seven are tested.
- Rodríguez González's account of Anglicism functions in contemporary Spanish adds finer detail to the analysis.
- Three motivations are confirmed in the Amharic media material: brevity, precision and variation of expression.
- Under variation, the same phenomenon is named once in English and once in Amharic within a passage. The authors argue this makes the text both more stylish and more cohesive.
Interesting ideas
- I1. An English term and its native counterpart can be alternated deliberately to refer to one entity, which serves cohesion rather than adding new information. — For Mova (frames): Coreference could treat a switch between synonymous or cross-language names as a strong sign of the same referent rather than a new entity.
- I2. Variation of expression is a stylistic device whose job is to avoid tiresome lexical repetition. — For Mova (back): When generating text from the meaning graph, the generator could rotate among equivalent labels for a repeated entity so the output reads naturally while still mapping back to the same node.
- I3. A borrowed word may survive because it carries a narrower, more exact sense than the closest native word, as with Galinsky's example of German der Job meaning only temporary or side work. — For Mova (world): The ontology could store such sense restrictions explicitly so that near-synonyms are not merged when their scopes differ.
- I4. Brevity explains word choice: a short form wins over a multi-morpheme or compound equivalent when both mean the same thing. — For Mova (back): The text → graph → text compressor could use a length-aware preference among equivalent surface forms, with the reason for each choice recorded.
- I5. An existing typology developed for one language contact situation is applied as a fixed label set to new data, and the results are reported by which categories are attested. — For Mova (learn): Evaluation could reuse established taxonomies as closed label schemes, so that the absence of a category in the data becomes an informative result rather than a gap.
Cite
@inproceedings{mekonnen2023stylistic,
title = {{Stylistic Motivation in Amharic Media Language Use}},
author = {Mekonnen, A.M. and Hussien, E.},
booktitle = {Язык и текст 10},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.17759/langt.2023100204},
url = {https://doi.org/10.17759/langt.2023100204}
}References
- Bliss A. Globalization and language change in Chile (a look at the –ish languages and more) // Alicanto. 2011. Ed. 4, pp. 17-26. find
- Crystal D., Davy D. Investigating English style. 2016. London: Routledge. 278 p. find
- Galinsky H. Stylistic aspects of linguistic borrowing: a stylistic and comparative view of American elements in modern German, and British English // Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien. 1963. Vol. 8, pp. 98-135. find
- Gentsch K. English borrowings in German newspaper language: motivations, frequencies and types, on the basis of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Muenchner Merkur, and Bild [Электронный ресурс]. URL: https://scholarship.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/bitstream/handle/10066/10344/Gentsch_thesis_2005.pdf?i sAllowed=y&sequence=1 (дата обращения: 30.03.2023) ↗
- Miššíková G. Linguistic stylistics. 2003. Nitra: Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa, Filozofická fakulta. 126 p. Mekonnen A.M., Hussien E. Stylistic Motivation in Amharic Media Language Use Language and Text. 2023. Vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 38–56. Меконнен А.М., Хуссиен Э. Стилистическая мотивированность при использовании языка амхарских СМИ Язык и текст. 2023. Том 10. № 2. С. 38–56. find our card
- Pfitzner J. Der Anglizismus im Deutschen. Ein Beitrag zur Bestimmung seiner stilistischen Funktion in der heutigen Presse. 1978, Stuttgart: Metzler. 250 s. find
- Rodríguez González F. Functions of anglicisms in contemporary Spanish // Cahiers de lexicologie. 1996. Vol. 1. № 68, pp. 107-128. find
- Rudakova T.O. Anglo-American borrowing in the modern German language: reasons and factors determining its intensity // Вiсник Луганського нацiонального унiверситету iменi Тараса Шевченка. Фiлологiчнi науки. 2012. № 14 (249). С. 96-112. find
- Simpson P. Stylistics: a resource book for students. 2004. London: Psychology Press. 247 p. find
- Teferra A. Amharic: political and social effects on English loan words // Globally speaking: motives for adopting English vocabulary in other languages / Edited by: J. Rosenhouse, R. Kowner. 2008. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 300 p. find
- Zulfigar A. Stylistics and discourse analysis: a contribution in analyzing literature // Academy of the Punjab in North America. 2016. References 1. Bliss A. Globalization and language change in Chile (a look at the –ish languages and more) // Alicanto. 2011. Ed. 4, pp. 17-26. 2. Crystal D., Davy D. Investigating English style. 2016. London: Routledge. 278 p. 3. Ekström M. Research on media and democracy. Reflections on changes and challenges // Nordicom Review. № 29 (2), pp. 45-52. 4. Galinsky H. Stylistic aspects of linguistic borrowing: a stylistic and comparative view of American elements in modern German, and British English // Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien. 1963. Vol. 8, pp. 98-135. 5. Gentsch K. English borrowings in German newspaper language: motivations, frequencies and types, on the basis of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Muenchner Merkur, and Bild [Elektronnyi resurs]. Available at: https://scholarship.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/bitstream/handle/10066/10344/Gentsch_thesis_2005.pdf?i sAllowed=y&sequence=1 (Accessed: 30.03.2023) 6. Miššíková G. Linguistic stylistics. 2003. Nitra: Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa, Filozofická fakulta. 126 p. 7. Pfitzner J. Der Anglizismus im Deutschen. Ein Beitrag zur Bestimmung seiner stilistischen Funktion in der heutigen Presse. 1978, Stuttgart: Metzler. 250 s. 8. Rodríguez González F. Functions of anglicisms in contemporary Spanish // Cahiers de lexicologie. 1996. Vol. 1. № 68, pp. 107-128. 9. Rudakova T.O. Anglo-American borrowing in the modern German language: reasons and factors determining its intensity // Visnik Lugans'kogo natsional'nogo universitetu imeni Tarasa Shevchenka. Filologichni nauki. 2012. № 14 (249), pp. 96-112. 10. Simpson P. Stylistics: a resource book for students. 2004. London: Psychology Press. 247 p. 11. Teferra A. Amharic: political and social effects on English loan words // Globally speaking: motives for adopting English vocabulary in other languages / Edited by: J. Rosenhouse, R. Kowner. 2008. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 300 p. 12. Zulfigar A. Stylistics and discourse analysis: a contribution in analyzing literature // Academy of the Punjab in North America. 2016. Информация об авторах Абебайеху Месселе Меконнен, кандидат филологических наук в области клинической Mekonnen A.M., Hussien E. Stylistic Motivation in Amharic Media Language Use Language and Text. 2023. Vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 38–56. Меконнен А.М., Хуссиен Э. Стилистическая мотивированность при использовании языка амхарских СМИ Язык и текст. 2023. Том 10. № 2. С. 38–56. лингвистики, доцент кафедры лингвистики, Аддис-Абебский университет, г. Аддис-Абеба, Эфиопия, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2159-4632, e-mail: abity123@gmail.com Элиас Хуссиен, магистр, кафедра английского языка, Аддис-Абебский университет науки и технологий, г. Аддис-Абеба, Эфиопия, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2206-4865, e-mail: eheliash60@gmail.com Information about the authors Abebayehu Messele Mekonnen, PhD in Clinical Linguistics, Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2159-4632, e-mail: abity123@gmail.com Elias Hussien, MA, Department of English, Addis Ababa Science and Technology University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2206-4865, e-mail: eheliash60@gmail.com Получена 01.06.2023 Принята в печать 15.06.2023 Mekonnen A.M., Hussien E. Stylistic Motivation in Amharic Media Language Use Language and Text. 2023. Vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 38–56. Received 01.06.2023 Accepted 15.06.2023 ↗ our card
This page in Markdown → https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/mekonnen-2023-stylistic-motivation-amharic-media-language/