Abstract

This study examines the frequency and distribution of anglicisms in written and spoken French using a corpus of over 100,000 words collected from two reality television shows and from blogs - data representing two varieties of French: Quebecois French (QC), and French from France (FR). The following research questions guided this study: (1) Which variety of French uses a higher total percentage of anglicisms? (2) Which language mode (written or oral) is characterized by a higher frequency of anglicisms? (3) How does the distribution of different anglicism categories (Wholesale, Direct Translations, Hybrids, and French Inventions and Modifications) compare across French language varieties? The results indicate that, overall, anglicisms tend to make up less than one percent of the corpus (0.99%) when using a token analysis, and 2.80% when analyzing anglicism types. Furthermore, of this total, the percentage of tokens/types in FR was 0.94% / 2.80%, while QC totaled 1.03% / 2.80%. Concerning language mode, anglicisms also appear to be equally frequent in the spoken (TV programs) and written (Internet blogs) corpora for both tokens and types. However, when taking language variety into consideration, FR uses a higher percentage of anglicisms in writing, while QC employs more anglicisms in spoken language. Finally, distribution results suggest that while FR and QC share the preference for anglicizing most frequently within the Wholesale and Hybrid categories, the two language varieties differ in the distribution of anglicisms among the Direct. Translation, and French Invention and Modification categories