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Observing Eurolects: Corpus analysis of linguistic variation in EU law
Edited by Laura Mori
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 86] 2018
► pp. 296–327

Chapter 12
Observing Eurolects

The case of Polish

The chapter explores the Polish Eurolect, the largest Slavonic language in the EU. In respect of EU-rooted phenomena, the Polish Eurolect shows a high frequency of semantic Europeisms and a low overlap of lexical bundles. As regards contact-induced features, the Eurolect is subject to strong interference from EU English in the form of borrowings and calques, including punctuation, capitalisation, morphology, lexis and structure. Another type of contact-induced features are differences in the distribution of linguistic features that are triggered or suppressed as a result of contact. Intra-linguistic variation is also strongly demonstrated as register mixing. Hybrid phenomena are significantly more intense in the early phase and are reduced later due to the institutionalisation of translation process.

Keywords: Polish, Slavonic languages, interference, textual fit, borrowings, Europeisms, variation
Article outline
  • 1.Polish as an official language of the European Union
  • 2.The emergence of the Polish Eurolect: Phases of development
  • 3.Previous research into the Polish Eurolect
  • 4.Material and method
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1EU-rooted phenomena
    • 5.2Contact-induced features
    • 5.3Intra-linguistic variability
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.86.12bie
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