Intrusions of Masbate Lexicon in Local Bilingual Tabloid

31st Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation (PACLIC 31), pages 255–264 Cebu City, Philippines, November 16-18, 2017 Copyright c⃝2017 Cecilia Genuino and Romualdo Mabuan Intrusions of Masbate Lexicon in Local Bilingual Tabloid Cecilia F. Genuino Romualdo A. Mabuan De La Salle University 2401 Taft Ave., Manila, Philippines Lyceum of the Philippines University Intramuros, Manila, Philippines 1002 cecilia.genuino@dlsu.edu.ph romualdo.mabuan@lpu.edu.ph Abstract Philippinization of English has come full circle: It has penetrated not only the center but also the periphery. This paper demonstrates a trend of nativization of English in a rural area as seen in a local daily. Thirty newspaper articles from The Stalwart Journal, a province- wide weekly circulating bilingual journal in the island province of Masbate, Bicol Region in the Philippines, were examined to identify the local lexical intrusions in the English text. The borrowing and assimilation of local lexical terms were analyzed and categorized. These lexical items were found in various categories: people, cultural events, cultural groups, public and private organizations, government programs, program units, government agencies, places, broadcast and social media, transportation, food, animals, human descriptions, public services, and other items. English nativization is shown in the borrowing and switching to local or native lexis in the news articles of the local daily. 1 Introduction ‘English is the global language’ (Crystal, 2003). English has developed a special role that is recognized in every country in the world. It has covered important domains in the global society such as telecommunications, business, commerce, air control, and social media, to name a few. The use of English has privileged some and marginalized others resulting in some sort of ‘linguistic deprivation’. In praise of the English language, Simon Jenkins (1995 in J. Jenkins, 2009) stated: ‘English has triumphed. Those who do not speak it are at a universal disadvantage against those who do. Those who deny this supremacy merely seek to keep the disadvantaged deprived.’ The dominance of the English language in the rapidly globalizing world resulted in linguistic inequality and induced some feeling of anxiety to who cannot speak it (Tsuda, 2005 in David & Dumanig, 2008). Today, with over 6,800 languages in the world, English has proven its power and dominance, which has spread in almost two-thirds of the world’s population (Crystal, 2003). Considered as the language of prestige and power, English has continuously expanded throughout the world, which gives birth to the emergence of different varieties now commonly called as World Englishes. These Englishes have embraced the world’s English and appropriated it to suit their local cultures and contexts based on the needs of their communities. Sik and Anping (2004 in David & Dumanig, 2008) suggests that with its imperialist and globalizing force, English has penetrated many non-English speaking communities results in a linguistic phenomenon called ‘code-switching’, which also leads to the nativization or indigenization of English throughout the world. This Englishization of non- English contexts, according to B. Kachru (2011), gives birth to ‘transplantation’ of English to different areas creating various varieties. Saghal (1991 in David …

Content truncated to 500 words