Towards Localization of Anglicisms

The study investigates the ways in which the use ofanglicisms on the localized promotional websites of globalcompanies may be beneficial for the companies. The study suggeststhat anglicisms may be used in a promotional text as a strategicdevice, and localization of anglicisms is defined as part of thelocalization process which requires the adaptation of thestylistic, grammatical, and sociolinguistic aspects of anglicismsto the target language. The data came from the Best Western Italiawebsite, and the study focuses on the use of anglicisms in Italian.The data were collected in the period 18.12.2006-23.12.2006, andthe material for the present study consists of 48 web pages thatcontain 10 785 words, 490 of which are anglicisms, and,consequently, anglicisms make 4.5% of the total number of words.The study performs data-driven analysis of anglicisms that meansthat the methods were determined by the data, and thosecharacteristics of anglicisms which were more frequentlyencountered in the corpus of the present study were analysed. Thus,the present study combines quantitative and qualitative methods.Firstly, the frequency and word class distribution of anglicismswere identified. Secondly, semantic and etymological analyses ofanglicisms were performed. Thirdly, grammatical analysis ofanglicisms was conducted that focused on the word formationprocesses, the assignation of gender, the plural formation, wordorder and agreement of noun phrases, verbs, adverbs, spelling, andfalse anglicisms. The results of the present study suggest that theuse of anglicisms on a localized promotional website may help todesignate the target audience of the website, economize space on awebsite by using shorter English words, avoid the ambiguity causedby homonyms, create an authentic atmosphere of internationalenvironment, and enrich the user?s vocabulary with new vocabularyitems and new concepts. However, it is necessary to acknowledgethat the effectiveness of such a marketing strategy depends oncertain characteristics of the target market, and the usage ofanglicisms might be very popular among a particular speechcommunity, but ineffective and harmful when considering a broaderpopulation.