Anglicizmus startup a jeho deriváty vo frankofónnom mediálnom diskurze na pozadí expresívnej lexiky
The Anglicisme Startup and its Derivatives in Francophone Media Discourse on the Background of Expressive Lexis

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, we discuss expressions derived from the anglicism startup which have arisen in the francophone linguistic environment concomitant with the domestication of this loanword in the French lexicon. Our aim was to identify and substantiate the expressive character of some of these derivatives, which stems from French speakers’ attitudes towards the startup business culture. We also wanted to determine their attitudes towards the use of the French equivalent jeune pousse. To do this, we used the Gallicagram tool to show that the use of anglicisms is clearly prevalent in francophone media discourse. We used the corpus manager Sketch Engine to search for derivatives. We worked with the French Web 2023 corpus as well as our own corpus compiled from articles from the periodical Le Monde from 2022. In total, we were able to identify 12 derivatives: startuper, startupeur, startupeuse, startupeux, startupien, startupienne, startupiste, startupesque, startupisation, startupisme, startuping, and (se) startupiser. Given that most of them are not lexicalized, it was problematic to judge their status in terms of expressive coloration. We relied on their contextual usage, the semantics of the affixes used, the presence or absence of lexicalization, integration into the professional lexicon, metalinguistic rendering using quotation marks, and a broader examination of the workings of the startup world. While for some derivatives the absence of expressivity was unambiguous (startuper, startupeur, startupeuse), as they are technical terms, for others expressivity was present based on the semantics of the affix (startupesque), the context (startupeux) and/or the use of quotation marks (startupiste). For the remaining derivatives, we cannot yet assess expressivity unambiguously.

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