This book documents and describes lexical borrowings in informal American English, an interesting and expanding part of the vernacular vocabulary of American English. Their popularity is hardly surprising given the growing social, cultural, and political importance of ethnic minorities, which in 2021 constituted almost 40 percent of the entire population of the United States (see US Census Bureau Online); they are also firmly entrenched in the fabric of American speech reflecting the immigrant character of the country symbolized by the concept of “the melting pot” (Reference Mauk and OaklandMauk and Oakland [1995] 2005: 8). Although seen as the bailiwick of immigrants or their descendants, these expressions are no longer limited in use to their speech, and ‒ as evidenced in this book by the sheer bulk of citations from diverse contemporary US sources ‒ they have grown increasingly common among larger segments of American society. The popularity of informal borrowings also stems from the spreading ubiquity of informal language featuring prominently in social media, press, film, television, and literature and occurring in more communicative situations than ever (see Reference AytoAyto 1999: vii). Moreover, informal lexicon ‒ jointly composed of slang and colloquialism ‒ takes up at least 20 percent of all vocabulary known by the average American (see estimates by Reference LighterLighter 1994: xxxvi; Widawski and Kowalczyk 2012: 200), while slang itself is considered to be a distinctively American phenomenon (Reference ColemanColeman 2014: 12), strongly rooted in the oral tradition and sociocultural context of the country. Finally, the frequent use of informal borrowings in mass media and popular culture contributes to their popularity and increases their circulation nationwide.
Despite the growing importance of this type of vocabulary, publications on borrowings in informal American English have been scarce. First of all, borrowings are often considered a marginal or “negligible” part of informal lexicon, especially its slang component (see, for instance, Reference EbleEble 1996: 75), a repeated and uninformed claim which this book aims to disprove. Second of all, while there are several academic papers loosely connected with the subject, they are either narrowed in scope to individual languages or focused on select aspects of informal borrowings; general dictionaries on slang and colloquialism, while often including borrowings, are necessarily limited to lexicographic presentation and understandably lack any detailed linguistic analysis; finally, there are no book-length monographs designed specifically to address the issue (see Chapter 1 for details). As a result, there has been a growing need for an informative resource book which would offer a systematic and comprehensive description of this type of lexicon, especially in an educational context.
By addressing specifically borrowings in informal American English, this book attempts to fulfill this need. Importantly, instead of focusing on theoretical aspects or sociohistorical context, it has a chiefly descriptive and educational orientation. While both informal and borrowing are thoroughly defined and characterized in the book (see Chapters 2 and 4), for the sake of this introduction let us briefly define the two concepts. First of all, in this book both of these terms refer to language and not any other aspect of human life. Informal refers to a type of vocabulary which is stylistically “lower” than the standard language and “below” the formal and neutral registers on the formality scale (Reference WidawskiWidawski 2015: 9), while borrowing is generally defined as an expression “borrowed” or “taken” from one language to another (Reference StevensonStevenson 2010: 199). Fused together, these two terms refer broadly to a subset of lexicon composed of foreign-origin expressions transplanted into an informal lexicon of American English. Such expressions are used mainly by immigrant and ethnic minorities in the United States but have also become assimilated into general informal American English (Reference AllenAllen 1993: 6) and are widely known by Americans regardless of their ethnicity.
The aim of this book is primarily the documentation and description of informal borrowings. Accordingly, the methodological foundations of this project stem from documentary and descriptive linguistics as well as sociolinguistics (see, for instance, Reference KipferKipfer 1984, Reference ThorneThorne 1990, Reference Llamas, Mullany and StockwellLlamas et al. 2007, Reference Sakel and EverettSakel and Everett 2012, or Reference Mallinson, Childs and Van HerkMallinson et al. 2013), particularly slang lexicography. Such a multidisciplinary approach relies strongly on the collection of authentic lexical material in the form of a large lexical database of contextual examples, which then serves as the basis for analysis. The assumption has been to gain as much exposure to informal borrowings as possible and to record their usage in natural contexts from diverse contemporary sources. To that end, citations have been collected from such sources as film, television, magazines, literature, the Internet, and utterances by native speakers. The material was collected through extensive fieldwork in the United States in recent years, and research at academic institutions such as Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Arizona, the University of Florida, and the City University of New York. The methods used in data collection and database creation were varied but largely conventional: data was recorded in the form of written notes or Dictaphone recordings which were systematically entered into the database. The Internet was used extensively, and a sizable portion of citations was taken directly from online sources. The result of the project was a database of several thousand citations, which was the basis for this book. A detailed description of methodology is given in Chapter 1, while a complete list of sources is given under Sources at the end of the book.
The description of borrowings in informal American English is multileveled and is clearly indicated in the organization of this book’s contents. The first two chapters are introductory in character. Chapter 1, “Foundations,” focuses on an overview of research on the subject and the methodological characteristics of this project involving its scope, collection, and description of data. Chapter 2, “Terms,” outlines the fundamental linguistic nomenclature including the titular “borrowing” and “informal language” as well as terms which are related or confused with these terms. Chapter 3, “Donors,” identifies the language donors that have contributed to borrowings in informal American English, including both major donors, such as Spanish and Yiddish, and lesser ones. Chapter 4, “Types,” views informal borrowings from diverse typological levels such as borrowed material, part of speech, assimilation, modification, frequency, or register. Chapter 5, “Changes,” analyzes various lexical changes the informal borrowings have undergone when adapted into the linguistic system of American English, including phonological, orthographical, morphological, semantic, grammatical, and stylistic changes. Chapter 6, “Functions,” discusses the motives for using informal borrowings and presents their referential, social, psychological, rhetorical, and cultural functions, including the phenomenon of linguistic appropriation. Chapter 7, “Themes,” provides an overview of the main lexical fields of informal borrowings, grouped into three superordinate fields: core, culture-specific, and miscellaneous. All in all, the assumption is that rather than focusing on borrowings representing a single theme or taken from a single language, such multileveled linguistic description of informal borrowings from numerous languages is much more informative and useful, and lends itself to a holistic treatment of the subject matter in and of itself.
An integral part of the book is the Glossary, forming over half of the book. Aside from serving as a quick reference, its main purpose is to document and define the entire collection of borrowings in informal American English, many of which have been featured as illustrations in the main text of this book. The glossary lists 1,200 entries. Each entry contains grammatical identification, usage labels, a definition in standard English, a quick bibliographical reference, two contextual examples with clearly identified sources and dates, as well as dating and etymological information. Because of its large size and in-depth description, it can easily stand as a dictionary in its own right.
Finally, it should be noted that while this book is aimed primarily at linguists, teachers, and students of linguistics, it is written in a manner which is hopefully also suited to a general readership. Aside from its primary orientation, it is intended to have a fairly practical quality as well. This can be seen in the multileveled but straightforward organization of its contents, including chapter outlines and summaries, in its illustratory use of citational examples in the main text, as well as in the utilitarian character of the Glossary and the extensive Index. The book also avoids jargon and excessive linguistic nomenclature, although it explains such terms when needed.
