Language Contacts in Belgian Media

Introduction.Language situation in Belgium is considered unique because, despite several state languages, a dozen minority languages, and hundreds of dialects being in constant contact with each other, the Belgian language community is also actively influenced by the English language. The relevance of this research is dictated by the growing importance of the English language in Europe, where the latter is frequently used as a lingua franca, by the developing mutual influence of the French and the Dutch languages in Belgium, and also by the linguists’ interest towards the matter of code-switching. The purpose of this research lies in analyzing the examples of code-switching in Belgian media, and in exploring their functions and the strategies of forming them in the context of the difficult language situation in Belgium. 

Methodology and sources. The material of this research consists of publications in Belgian newspapers and journals and materials of Belgian informational resources in the social network “Instagram”. The following methods are used in this research: continuous sampling method, synthesis method, descriptive method, classification method, and comparative language analysis. 

Results and discussion. The research briefly describes the features of sociolinguistic situation in Belgium, particularly in three regions: Flanders, Wallonia, and the BrusselsCapital Region. Analysis of the found in Walloon and Flemish examples of code-switching showed that in Belgian newspapers and journals code-switching in French – Dutch and Dutch – French pairs is very rare, and the absolute majority of examples is in English. Switching to English adds some emotional aspect to a text and is used when addressing to precedent statements, situations, and names that entered the international discourse in English. According to P. Muysken, among the strategies of code-switching the most frequently used are insertion and alternation. 

Conclusion. Sociocultural, economical and linguistic differences lead to the autonomy and certain independence of Belgian regions. They also provoked the willing to turn to English as a mediatory language during interpersonal communication. Analysis of the written sources allowed to document the cases of mostly motivated switching to English and study their stylistic, functional and linguistic features.

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