Morbusanglicus? On the range of the influence of English on Polish and Italian medical language Cover Image

Morbusanglicus? On the range of the influence of English on Polish and Italian medical language
Morbusanglicus? On the range of the influence of English on Polish and Italian medical language

Author(s): Małgorzata Karczewska
Subject(s): Language studies, Applied Linguistics, Morphology, Pragmatics
Published by: Editura Universitaria Craiova
Keywords: language contacts; Anglicisms; medical language; borrowings;

Summary/Abstract: In today’s world, English is the language of global communication in both professional and private life. Its dominance is apparent at the lexical level, with a significant number of Anglicisms introduced into other languages. Arrigo Castellani, an Italian linguist, compared the phenomenon to an epidemic, calling it morbusanglicus, the English disease, as early as in 1987. The aim of this paper is to study the range of the English influence on the Polish and Italian medical language. The research comprises a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of the corpus consisting of Przegląd Lekarski and La Rivista Medica Italiana Online, Polish and Italian medical journals. Throughout the study, the focus is put on the number of Anglicisms (types and tokens) in the corpus and their functioning in the recipient language, mainly at the morphological level.

  • Issue Year: 1/2022
  • Issue No: XXIII
  • Page Range: 75-88
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: English