Görlach, M. (2003): English Words Abroad, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 188 p.

The traveller in Europe is often struck by the different anglicisms which are current in the various countries visited. French speakers who cross the Rhine are surprised to see hoarding with cigarette advertisements entirely in English, whereas observant Germans are amazed by the survival in French of loans long assimilated in German, such as weekend. In a word, Europeans trend to notice the anglicisms which are not used in their own language. It is only in the last few years, however, that it has been possible to compare just how anglicisation has advanced in the various European languages, thanks almost exclusively to the extensive efforts of Manfred Görlach. Manfred Görlach is well known amongst anglicists, in Germany and abroad, especially for his long-standing editorship of English world wide (John Benjamins) and more recently for the Dictionary of European Anglicisms (DEA) and the accompanying history and bibliographies which followed.English Words Abroad can be considered a third companion volume, as it sets forward an analysis of the various elements that went into the making of the dictionary. It should be pointed out that the author of this review was the contributor of the French input of both the dictionary and two other works, and is thus implicated in the corpus analysed, though in no way associated with the volume now under review. The first chapters give an overview of the aims and methods involved in making the dictionary and were originally published well before the dictionary. “A usage dictionary of anglicisms” presents the state of the art of anglicism studies in the various European languages at the time, and the reasons that lead to the vast enterprise of the DEA. It pleads the case for a focus on those anglicisms which are actually used in the languages concerned, rather than those appearing in secondary literature and analysed from a purely etymological viewpoint, and proposes concrete means of measuring loan word integration. It justifies choices made concerning the form of the marcostructure and – in rather more detail – the microstructure of the dictionary and justifies the methodological choices. This chapter was originally written in 1994, and contains many footnotes added to point out in how far the predictions made at the time were actually fulfilled. The second chapter, “The fleeting vocabulary” examines problems involved with fixing in dictionary form a part of the vocabulary (loan words) which, as neologisms, are notoriously unstable. Many of the points made here, often as questions or subjects for further research, are taken up again and developed in the following chapters. The impact of English on native morphology is one such point, as is the treatment of individual loan word series. To the question as to whether “the peculiar clippings of English compounds in French […] by which dancing(-hall), parking(-site), sleeping(-car) and smoking(-jacket) were reduced to their first element –is this principle still universally valid in new loans?” (p. 41), the short answer is yes (see sweat(-shirt), etc.) but Görlach is quite right to claim that more research is needed to muster the necessary evidence. In this chapter too, the reaction to the anglicisation of the various languages is described, with inevitable emphasis on the French policy on replacing loans from English. Here some points could have been more detailed. Although some official substitutes have indeed remained as so many dead letters, it is a slightly sweeping statement to say “official measures taken by the French proved largely ineffective,” p. 35. The success of French computer terminology is proof of the contrary: most of the terms from the first list of official substitutes, …