English Borrowings in the Virtual German-Language Advertising Communication: Sites of German Cosmetics Companies

Abstract

More and more English loan words appear on German internet sites with each year, following the mass media globalization trend. This article describes English loan words and phrases in the German-speaking online advertising of German cosmetics brands. The authors examined how English borrowings function in the virtual advertising and defined their place in the text structure. The research included such methods as dictionary definition, linguistic, contextual, and structural analyses. The continuous sampling revealed the following contexts: product names, slogans, and product descriptions. Advertisers referred to English borrowings to make the advertizing international, to use them as stylistic devices, or to designate new concepts. The borrowings differed in structure as individual lexemes or phrases, both English and German, sometimes with no grammatical agreement between the adjective and the noun. English phrases occurred more often than separate words.