Social Implications of Borrowings

Abstract

Abstract The paper is focused on the sociolinguistic study of borrowings used in twenty-first century American literature to bring out their potential to translate status and high social position of characters. The study is aimed at proving that borrowings are socially charged and function in speech as indices of socially privileged layers of society. The study of modern British novels by Jeffrey Archer carried out earlier revealed four categories of borrowings, serving to represent upper-class characters: 1) terms, 2) a pair of synonymous words of Germanic and foreign origin, 3) U-class words, and 4) loan words used ironically. The study of American novels by Amor Towles A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) and Rules of Civility (2012) allows us to verify this classification and expand it by adding two more categories: 5) a pair of synonymous words of Germanic and foreign origin, like in group 2 but with switched social connotations, and 6) a pair of borrowings, one explaining the meaning of the other. The analysis has proved that borrowings in American, like in British literature, explicitly or implicitly translate the social status of a character. The question to answer is whether classes 5 and 6 have universal or culturally specific nature. Further research is therefore required to shed light on this very subtle use of borrowings in speech.