The impact of English on Spanish-language media in the USA

This paper analyzes the impact of English on Spanish-language newspapers published in the USA from a qualitative point of view. Departing from an analysis of over 200 articles from eight different US-newspapers, it is shown that the admission of lexical anglicisms is carefully controlled, whereas an ‘accidental’, apparently unmotivated influx of English can be observed on the morphosyntactic level. It is argued that most of these morphosyntactic structures transferred from English are the result of direct translations of English newspaper articles into Spanish. It will be concluded that the spread of ‘Spanglish’ morphosyntactic constructions – rather than lexical items – via the media will contribute to the creation of a new, US-specific variety of Spanish in the long run.