The use of anglo-american borrowings in German oral discourse
The article considers the nominative and pragmatic functions of anglo-american borrowings used in the oral discourse by Germans of two age groups: adolescents (from 14 to 19) and adults (from 45 to 60). The material is based on the research conducted in March 2017 among the students of the 8th to 13th grades and teachers of Wilhelm Gymnasium, Braunschweig, Germany. In our research we employed the following methods: questionnaire survey, continuous sampling, quantitative analysis, comparative analysis, elements of discourse analysis. The above-mentioned methods were used for the ends of observing and describing new tendencies in the use of anglo-american borrowings in the oral speech of native Germans, which contributes to the acuteness of the topic of research. The aims of our research were the following: 1) to determine the most frequently used English borrowings in the speech of two age groups: a) adolescents from 14 to 19; b) adults from 40 to 60; 2) to study the nominative and pragmatic characteristics of English borrowings in the speech of those groups. The research was conducted synchronically, with the exception of cases when it was necessary to specify some characteristics of the borrowed lexemes. The research focuses on English borrowings which occurred in questionnaires of 70 % of the respondents (175 out of 220 in the first group and 36 out of 52 in the second). The overall number of anglo-americanisms under research is 20. The process of borrowing is multifaceted, which continues to make it an acute topic of contemporary research. The results of the research concerning the role of anglo-american borrowings in different discourse types can be useful in teaching German as Second Foreign Language and in lecture courses in the theory of the language. The conducted analysis opens new prospects for further research of the process of semantic adaptation of English borrowings in the German lexical system.