Semantic Anglicisms in French Internet Forum

Semantic assimilation is a many-sided and a multidimensional phenomenon assuming a number of analysis approaches. The article is a study of the semantic borrowing process due to either graphical or phonetic identity of lexical units. It discusses general semantic transformations of the English language borrowings alongside with the examples of semantic anglicisms in the French Internet discourse. The global tendency is that the French language is daily receipting quite a number of English words the Internet discourse being one of the leading media. To specify the borrowing patterns in the French language at the semantic level the net forum genre is chosen as a specific combination of oral and written speech features giving a most outstanding and evident picture of all linguistic tendencies. The work is an attempt to define what a semantic anglicism is and what linguistic mechanisms are involved in the process when French lexemes undergo semantic transformations due to their either graphical or phonetic likeness to English ones. The research topicality is conditioned by the nature of the global Internet discourse itself the latter being the speech type abundant in all kinds of borrowings anglicisms in particular. The research background is the legal French policy to defend the national language and the French linguists struggle against anglicisms overwhelming penetration into French. The analysis is also held through experimental French native speakers interviewing for the excessive use of English words and its expediency. The research methods are structural-semantic, comparative, statistical. The units under study are English language semantic borrowings in the French internet forum held by native French language speakers.