Graphic and Orthotypographic Aspects of Anglicisms in the Field of Sports

Summary

Introduction

Orthographic typography or orthotypography deals with the different uses and conventions applied to the writing of a text, and is particularly concerned with typographic diacrisis, that is to say, the different styles of letters (round, italics, small capitals, etc.) (see Martínez de Sousa 2008: 393). In this paper we focus only on texts of sports journalism which contain anglicisms and present these features. Much of the data has been drawn from the Gran diccionario de anglicismos (GDA) and the Diccionario de anglicismos del deporte (DAD).

English is one of the official languages used in the international diffusion of sports, which makes it predominant in international competitions and information databases. Since English and Spanish have different structures and categories, it is advisable to bear in mind some elements whenever a text is transferred from one language to the other in order to avoid orthotypographic anglicisms and other aspects of graphic influences.

Overall, the typographic and orthotypographic aspects observed in this field, with regards to anglicisms (see Rodríguez González 2019), are not very different from the ones in writings in Spanish on the whole, but there exist particularities which it will be useful to underline and nuance.

Orthographic aspects

Use of the initial majuscule

Because of English influence, in writings in Spanish one can spot a growing use of capitals or majuscules in two types of context. The most disruptive one is its recent use in the written press with specific common nouns which, on account of their morphosyntactic nature, have always been excluded in Spanish, as in French; the names of the months of the year (Enero, Febrero, etc.) and the days of the week (Lunes, Martes, etc.) stand out among them. Majuscules are also spotted frequently in the names contained within the titles of publications, as a quick glance at the bibliographies of various books will prove.

These titles somehow – thematically – keep a semantic relation with “denominations”, and this type of names is prone to be written with capitals because of their “proper noun” condition or their need to be highlighted with clear publicity aims.