Tables for the article "The integration of English loanwords into Quebec French press: evidence from corpus-based lexicometric, contextual and discourse analysis"

Description

I hypothesised that English loanwords in Quebec French could be noticeable not because of their number, but because of their high frequency rate. In other words, it is possible that they are not so numerous, but some of them are often heard and read in repeated contexts, e.g., in utterances or discussions on particular topics. This assumption inevitably poses the question about the causes for an active usage of some English loanwords in francophone Quebec. To try to identify these causes, I for the first time approached the issue of the supposedly high frequency rate of English loanwords (by way of example of Quebec French print media) from the perspective of (1) the circumstances of loanword usage (context) and (2) the linguistic properties of specific loanword types. To verify my hypothesis, I meticulously observed the use of the idiomatic loanword "mur-à-mur" ("wall-to-wall") and morphological loanword "gagnant-gagnant" ("win-win") in 1,556 issues of the Quebec francophone newspaper "Le Devoir" ("The Duty") published between 2017 and 2020. The methods of lexicometric, contextual and discourse analysis revealed the types of contexts and topics welcoming the two loanwords the most as well as recurrent usage patterns characteristic of the studied loanword types. There were indeed two recurrent context types that most frequently encompassed two English loanwords in the journalistic discourse of "Le Devoir": “Opinions and Letters” and “Miscellaneous Topics.” In fact, the overall occurrences of the loanwords were distributed differently among all 13 of the considered context types. The applied multidimensional approach helped me to discover the recurrent usage patterns that are characteristic of the studied loanword types. For example, the idiomatic loanword "appliquer mur à mur" (to apply wall-to-wall) in the frequently repeated contexts of discussions on educational policies and the morphological item "gagnant-gagnant" that appeared to have the potential to be used in patterns ("accord gagnant-gagnant" (win-win agreement)). The data deposited here are Table 1 and Table 2. Table 1 presents the idiomatic loanword mur à mur (wall-to-wall) and morphological loanword gagnant-gagnant (win-win) with their tokens’ distribution by context types in the issues of the newspaper "Le Devoir" ("The Duty") published from 2017 to 2020. Table 2 features discourse, contextual, and grammatical features of the studied loanwords in the observed contexts. Since context type in print media was found to be an important factor in the integration of English loanwords, translation from English into Quebec French of the contexts belonging to the particular type may legitimize (or not) the use of the borrowed items within those contexts in the target text. In particular, materials on professional translation pedagogy related to the language pair in question would benefit from covering this crucial role of the context and could be compiled based on the obtained data.

Steps to reproduce

Regarding context types, it is important to note a few features of the strategy that I used to specify the discovered contexts in the corpus. My approach to context was unrelated to the exploration of genres or styles in the texts. The contextual analysis that I applied can be described in terms of thematic analysis. Within this framework, I identified the contexts of loanword usage by observing the sentences surrounding the items. This allowed me to first trace recurrent patterns (if any) in the usage of the studied lexical units and then identify the topic expressed in these sentences. Once I defined the topic, I categorized it under a “broader context” umbrella. Examples of topics include "an interview with an artist" and "a story about a museum visit", which belong to the broader context of “Culture.” It was these broader contexts, which encompassed multiple similar topics, that I considered “context types.” In this way, I identified 13 context types characteristic of the newspaper "Le Devoir." It should be noted that the context type “Miscellaneous topics” (or just “Miscellaneous” as it is labelled in Table 1) covers topics that could not be categorized under any other context type.

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• University of Ottawa

  Ontario, Ottawa

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