Prescriptivism and Descriptivism in The Treatment of Anglicisms in A Series of Bilingual Spanish-English Dictionaries

International Journal of Lexicography, Vol. 24 No. 3, 2011, pp.
277–305
doi:10.1093/ijl/ecr001 Advance access publication 10 February 2011 277
PRESCRIPTIVISM AND
DESCRIPTIVISM IN THE
TREATMENT OF ANGLICISMS IN
A SERIES OF BILINGUAL
SPANISH-ENGLISH DICTIONARIES1
Isabel Balteiro: Universidad de Alicante (balteiro@ua.es)
Abstract
An important decision in dictionary design is the treatment given to borrowings or

foreign words, that is, whether they should be included in cases of widespread usage
(following a descriptive perspective), or rejected because the lexicographer considers
that they are undesirable (from a prescriptive approach). This paper analyses the treat-
ment of Anglicisms in a modern bilingual specialized English-Spanish dictionary series
and shows that the lexicographers have often avoided the inclusion of Anglicisms, even
when either amply documented among expert users or accepted by prescriptive author-
ities. Our analysis shows that this attitude may not reflect actual usage and, what is
possibly more problematic, entails at times a neglect of potentially confusing items, such
as false Anglicisms. This study also illustrates some of the consequences of the choice
between prescriptivism and descriptivism, and suggests that some intermediate positions
might be possible and helpful for dictionary users.
1. Introduction
Do dictionaries describe what a language is like, or tell us what it should be

like? If we take a handbook on lexicography at random, such as Svensén’s, we
come across section headings like ‘1.2. What a dictionary describes’, or state-
ments like the following:
Firstly the dictionary describes the formal characteristics of the words, that
is, how they are spelt, how they are inflected, and how they form
derivatives and compounds. Secondly, their semantic characteristics are
presented, that is, what they mean (Svensén 2009: 3–4).
# 2011 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions,

please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

by Universidad Juarez Autonoma de Tabasco user
on 14 February 2018
278 Isabel Balteiro
In this case, for example, the author does not say what they should mean, or
how they should be spelt, and therefore appears to follow a descriptive line.
However, there is still some ambiguity in this position, because the pre-
sent tense, ‘how they are spelt’(our italics), may be given a normative or a
prescriptive meaning (as when one says ‘This is how things are done’).
Similarly, the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary defines the
word ‘dictionary’ as ‘A book dealing with the individual words of a lan-
guage (or certain specified classes of them), so as to set forth their orthog-
raphy, pronunciation, signification, and use, their synonyms, derivation,
and history, or at least some of these facts’ (our italics). As one can see, the
definition resorts, in a quite descriptive manner, to the neutral ‘set forth’, which
also according to the OED is ‘To express in words, give an account of, present a
statement of, esp. in order, distinctly, or in detail’.
Our second question, therefore, concerns the role of the lexicographer
and the type of dictionary. Descriptive dictionaries are supposed to reflect
usage as it is, whereas prescriptive ones attempt to provide rules and strug-
gle against what they feel is non-acceptable usage. Although it has
been said that ‘[t]erminology is prescriptive, whereas lexicography is de-
scriptive’ (Bergenholtz and Tarp 1995: 10), such distinction does not seem
to be a clear-cut one now: on the one hand, terminology is now much
less prescriptive than it used to be, especially under the influence of cor-
pus linguistics (see, for instance, Temmerman 2000). On the other, some schol-
ars have been very explicit: Wells (1973: 8) stated that ‘it is not the
lexicographer’s role to prescribe as to good usage’, and Landau (1989: 32)
went even further and said that ‘[p]rescription is impossible to distinguish
from bias’, a remark that is no longer present in the latest edition of this
work (2001).
This dilemma between prescriptivism and descriptivism has been present ever
since lexicography started as a practice. Historically, however, it seems that
prescription is the option with the longer tradition. In English, and in many
other languages, dictionaries have been associated with conservatism, and even
viewed by many as ‘an instrument to retard or check natural change in lan-
guage’, although this is largely a perception which may need not be completely
true (Wells 1973: 7). Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that, historically,
most dictionaries were born with this intention in mind. That was the case of,
for example, the first still extant word-list of Spanish in the 15th century (see
Alvar Ezquerra 2003: 343), Dr Johnson, who at least initially set out in 1747 in
his Plan of a Dictionary to ‘establish and safeguard the purity of English’, or
the Spanish Real Academia, whose tasks were guided by the same principle, to
‘safeguard the purity and elegance of the language’. Even the Appendix Probi,
which paradoxically has been the main source of information on the evolution

on 14 February 2018
Prescriptivism and Descriptivism 279
of Latin, was created as an attempt to stop what was seen as a degradation of

the language.
In more recent times, some of the greatest debates in lexicography have
arisen precisely due to this matter, to such an extent that the third edition of
Webster (1961), which for many was too descriptive, caused what came to be
termed the ‘Second War of the Dictionaries’, when some scholars rebelled
against what they considered a ‘permissive’ attitude. As Yong and Peng
(2007: 116) have pointed out, the reputation of some dictionaries leads the
general public to expect some degree of prescriptivism. Thus, as these authors
quite aptly describe, ‘a dictionary that rids itself of all traces of value-judgment
and does not give stylistic and register labels of any kind to particular lexical
items is bound to stir up severe criticisms and raise a public outcry’. It remains
to be seen whether users may accept transitions from prescription to descrip-
tion (Verkuyl et al. 2003: 299).
It has been argued (e.g. Yong and Peng 2007: 114) that dictionary-making
has followed the general move from prescriptivism towards descriptivism in
language studies. However, the practical implications of such a move are not
always so obvious, because some dictionaries, like that by the Spanish Real
Academia (henceforth DRAE), are still largely prescriptive, despite its more
open attitude towards Anglicism acceptability as well as its pan-Hispanic ap-
proach. Similarly to language studies in general, in the field of translation
theory the conflict between the two poles has finally led to a descriptive ap-
proach, at least in literary translation. This means that, now a translation
(especially, a literary one) is seldom judged as ‘wrong’ or ‘right’. Rather, all
translations are considered valid per se, and so research in this discipline ana-
lyses the reasons for the translator’s decisions. Nevertheless, it must be noted
that the change in point of view has not reached all types of texts, and in
specialized translation the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ translations
still applies, even to the point where translators’ liability issues may arise
(see, for instance, Byrne 2007).
Given this state of affairs, the middle ground seems to be represented,
amongst others, by Benson et al. (1986: 4), who believe that, while lexicograph-
ers must consider a neutral standard, they must be prepared to record changes,
vocabulary being the one they mention first.
2. Anglicisms in dictionaries as a measure of prescriptivism and descriptivism
A good way to gauge the degree of descriptivism or prescriptivism in a dic-

tionary seems to be the response to the presence of Anglicisms, once their usage
has been detected in a language. Although probably the logical reaction in the
case of purists’ refusal of a new term would be its exclusion from the

on 14 February 2018
280 Isabel Balteiro
dictionary, it is also true that mentioning the undesired word in one way or
another may be more effective, since the non-appearance of a form may be
interpreted by the user as simply a neglect or an omission. Such was, in fact, the
strategy chosen by Dr Johnson in his Preface:
The words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge

of foreign languages, or ignorance of their own, by vanity or wantonness,
by compliance with fashion or lust of innovation, I have registered as
they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others
against the folly of naturalizing useless foreigners to the injury of the
natives.
At this stage, some remarks may be made about the prevailing attitude to-
wards Anglicisms in Spanish monolingual lexicography and in Spanish linguis-
tics in general. Over the 20th century, and even more so now, English has
contributed a vast number of words to the Spanish language, initially in the
areas of sailing, sport, fashion and industry and, after the Second World War,
in politics, business, culture and science (as pointed out, amongst others, by
Rodriguez and Lillo 1997: 10). Quite often, the literature on Anglicisms in
Spanish has been prescriptive, and many papers (e.g. Dı́az Rojo 2002) have
considered their acceptability in Spanish, which often means whether they were
worthy of inclusion in the DRAE. The most common attitude has been one of
resistance, that is, the main criterion was that the new word could not be
accepted if there was a suitable alternative in Spanish, regardless of whether
specialist users had embraced the new term. However, some winds of change
towards descriptivism can be found in the late eighties, for instance, in Vives
Coll (1989) who, on the suitability of auditar (an adapted form of audit), ac-
knowledges that it should be included due to its widespread usage. In these
cases, the position is a more moderate one, and ranges from the description of a
state of affairs, as in Pratt (1980) or Lorenzo (1996), to more specific sociolin-
guistic analyses (e.g. Görlach 2001, Rodrı́guez González 2002, Gimeno and
Gimeno 2003).
At present, the common feeling is that the Real Academia has failed to keep
up with the times. There are scholars who describe it as ‘a reactionary
backward-looking body, incapable of incorporating much indispensable
English vocabulary into Spanish’ (Pratt 1997: 279). It is true that in the
latest (22nd) edition, which we have used for this study, a more generous atti-
tude has been shown, although often the strategy is based on including the
Anglicism, but referring the reader to the ‘desirable’ form (as in marketing,
which refers to mercadotecnia). If we add to this that the criteria for acceptance
are not entirely clear (see, for instance, Domı́nguez Mejı́as 2002), the result is
that, by introducing some Anglicisms in its dictionary, the Academia has

on 14 February 2018
caused widespread discontent among purists, while still not satisfying

descriptivists.
In the field of specialized bilingual lexicography the dilemma also exists (as
noted, for example, by Piqué-Angordans et al. 2006). Also, there is an add-
itional reason (beyond ‘non-desirability’) which might lead lexicographers to
leave out an Anglicism, even if amply documented in the receiving language:
they consider that the Anglicism used in Spanish is transparent to the English
speaker, and therefore the users do not require any guidance, since they already
know its meaning in English. An illustration of this would be the non-inclusion
of banner in the Spanish-English section of a computing dictionary: the English
speaker already knows what it is, and the Spanish user is aware that it is an
English word and may assume that it means the same in English. A number of
objections may be raised here: first, users, as we have hinted earlier, may not
be specialists, but translators, and may not be aware of the complexities of each
and every subject matter. Secondly, omission does not tell the English
user whether the Anglicism in the target language is completely accepted, ac-
cepted in some contexts, or totally undesirable. Thirdly, the Spanish speaker
may not know that the word is of English origin, and therefore cannot deduce
(without help) that the term is also valid in English. Finally, there are cases of
borrowings where there has been a shift in meaning or usage, and
non-inclusion might lead the user to assume that, if the item exists in the
receiving language, the meaning is the same. This may be illustrated by the
English bungalow, which in Spanish is not a bungalow or bungaló (the English
word refers exclusively to a one-storey house, while most, if not all Spanish
buildings of that sort, have at least two storeys, and sometimes even four).
The Oxford Spanish Dictionary explains the difference, whereas Oxford Study
equates one with the other (although it must be said that the Real Academia
dictionary shares the mistake and defines it as ‘casa de una sola planta’
(‘one-storey house’)).
This latter issue takes us to the problem of false Anglicisms, that is, those
words which appear to be English, but have a different meaning (footing, used
in Spanish for jogging), or other usage restrictions (in Spanish parking is a
countable, singular noun, with the meaning which in English is expressed
through car park or parking lot). Sometimes those allegedly English words
simply do not exist at all and are hybrids or ‘loanblends’ created by analogy
(such as cuerding or puenting, ‘bungee jumping’, which have been derived from
cuerda (‘rope’) and puente (‘bridge’), resembling swimming, riding, etc.), and the
more recent balconing (jumping from balconies into swimming pools, a dan-
gerous pastime that became very popular in Spain in the summer of 2010); this
phenomenon has also been labelled ‘borrowing of grammatical morphemes’
(Heath 1994: 383–384). This topic has been studied in relation to European
languages as a group (Filipović 1995), or to specific cases, such as French
(Spence 1987), Italian (Furiassi 2003, 2010) or Spanish, both in general

on 14 February 2018
282 Isabel Balteiro
(Pratt 1980, Lorenzo 1996) and for humorous purposes (Rodrı́guez Medina
2004). However, there does not seem to be full agreement on the definition.
Furiassi (2003), for instance, defines false Anglicisms as ‘either . . . autonomous
coinages which resemble English words but do not exist in English, or . . . un-
adapted borrowings from English which originated from English words but
that are not encountered in English dictionaries, whether as entries or as sub-
entries’ and proposes the following typology (which we shall supplement with
examples from Peninsular Spanish):
(1) compound ellipses, where part of an English compound is used in the

receiving language instead of the full form. The common example is
parking, which in Spanish refers to the place, as in Voy a dejar el coche
en un parking (‘I am going to leave the car in a car park’), whereas in
English ‘parking’ would never act as the elliptical form of parking site or
parking lot;
(2) autonomous compounds, where two originally English elements are com-
bined to create a seemingly English word, but which does not appear as
an entry in English dictionaries. Furiassi quotes the case of recordman in
Italian (also found in Spanish and French), where two English elements
form a word which sounds English, but the item used in English would
be record holder;
(3) semantic shifts, where a genuine English word acquires a different mean-
ing in the receiving language (e.g. slip, which applies in Spanish or Italian
to male underwear, while in English it refers specifically to female under-
wear); and
(4) other phenomena included in Furiassi’s typology are trademarks, such
as Walkman, the portable cassette player developed by Sony (more
on this in Furiassi 2006), and hybrids. The latter are very productive
in Spanish, as in the aforesaid puenting (‘bungee jumping’, but also,
according to Riquelme (1998: 87), ‘directly asking for an authoriza-
tion to somebody higher than your immediate superior’), or cueling
(‘entering the underground without a ticket’). Note, however, that these
hybrids are not always considered as real false Anglicisms (Onysko
2007: 52).
Some of these false Anglicisms, though not originally correct in English,

have entered the language through its use as a lingua franca. Thus, although
the Oxford English Dictionary does not include ‘recordman’, the word is often
found in the website of the International Association of Athletics Federations
(www.iaaf.org), and it may not be long before this usage finally enters the
‘inner circle’ of Britain and the United States.
When a language contains ‘false Anglicisms’ like these, dictionaries, though
initially reluctant to include borrowings, might choose a descriptive (or less

on 14 February 2018
strict) approach and list items in order to warn users. The Oxford Spanish
Dictionary, for instance, includes parking and footing in the Spanish-English
section, and although it does not explicitly say it is a false Anglicism, it points
out that the correct equivalents in English are car park or parking lot and
jogging, respectively. However, sometimes dictionaries wrongly consider the
false Anglicism as a genuine English word. One of the dictionaries studied
here, for example, mistakenly suggests that it is possible to use holding in
English as a synonym of holding company:
holding1 n: GRAL tenencia; V. holding of office. [Exp: holding2 (GRAL, DER

tenencia, pertenencia, posesión, existencias, posesión de tierras; valores
en cartera, terratenencia; grupo industrial, asociación, sociedades tene-
doras de tı´tulos de otras sociedades), holding3 (SOC equivale a holding
company SHolding companies now run $3 trillion),. . . holding company
(SOC sociedad de control, sociedad instrumental, sociedad de
cartera. . .) . . . (Alcaraz and Hughes 20085: 428).
The Spanish word holding, which has been accepted by the Real Academia,
refers to the type of firm (in English holding company), as in El ya fusionado
Banco Central Hispano creó un holding asegurador junto al grupo italiano
Generali (‘The already merged Banco Central Hispano created an insurance
holding company together with the Italian group Generali’). Holding with this
use does not function as a countable noun in English, but this bilingual dic-
tionary seems to imply that it can also be used to refer to a type of firm in
English, which is not the case according to the OED. Note, however, that some
online dictionaries are beginning to list this usage (see http://www.websters-
online-dictionary.com).
3. Prescriptivist and descriptivist attitudes towards Anglicisms in Spanish-English

bilingual dictionaries
As explained in the preceding section, the dilemma between prescriptivism and

descriptivism can be aptly exemplified by the treatment of borrowings or for-
eign words. Prescriptive dictionaries may either disregard the item completely
or include it with labels such as ‘undesirable’, ‘unnecessary neologism’, etc. and
propose what they consider more correct options, whereas descriptive diction-
aries might simply record the borrowing alongside other native items. In other
words, in general lexicography, the question for both prescriptivists and de-
scriptivists is, quite simply, whether a foreign word which has already been
present in a given language for some time (and, as such, has become part of its
lexical resources), and which has been reasonably well documented, is to be
listed in a dictionary. The easiest solution seems, quite obviously, to list it.

on 14 February 2018
284 Isabel Balteiro
However, a prescriptivist can also find reasons for not doing so, such as the
following:
(1) the language already has a (native) word for that meaning, which is
considered correct (for instance, some dictionaries do not include sponsor
in Spanish because the language already possesses patrocinador);
(2) the word describes a new notion or process, but in the lexicographer’s
view it has not been documented long enough (or she is simply unaware
of its existence);
(3) the word describes a new notion or process, but its spelling or morpho-
logical shape is so unlikely in the receiving language that it is felt to be
unacceptable. Instead, the adapted form is included (for instance, the case
of whisky, for which the DRAE proposed, quite unsuccessfully, the pro-
nunciation spelling güisqui);
(4) the word describes a new notion or process, and the lexicographer pro-
poses a calque or a translation (even though it may not be sufficiently
supported by usage) and rejects the original form (even if more widely
used). This is illustrated by Spanish dictionaries which preferred balonvo-
lea and balompie´ to voleibol and fútbol (Cuyás and Cuyás 1928, for in-
stance); and
(5) the lexicographer reticent to change feels that, once the undesirable elem-
ent has been included in the dictionary, there is no turning back, the
word will be given a badge of approval (as pointed out, amongst
others, by Dı́az Rojo 2002, regarding privacidad in Spanish) and its re-
moval from the language will become impossible. In spite of this, as will
be seen below, some dictionaries seem to ‘repent’ and remove new words
after inclusion, as the Spanish Real Academia dictionary often does.
This latter reason, coupled with the dictionary’s reputation as a conservative

tool, ultimately means that, as Svensén (2009: 45) pointed out, the lexicograph-
er should not include a non-acceptable form without reservations, or else it will
be ‘raised to the status of norm’. Such reservations may take the shape of a
usage remark, which can be more or less neutral, like ‘non-standard’, or con-
tain a value judgment, like ‘undesirable’, ‘incorrect’ or ‘unnecessary’. The
OED, for instance, contains similar remarks (although dictionaries on histor-
ical principles are not necessarily prescriptive nor descriptive), as is the case of
some of the uses of ‘me’ as the subject (‘me and my friends’), which according
to the OED are ‘regarded as non-standard by many grammarians since the 18th
cent[ury]’, or ‘at that’, which, as the OED says, is found ‘now chiefly in sub-
standard speech or representations of it’. Nevertheless, it should be considered
that, precisely if the lexicographer’s aim is prescriptive, recording the undesir-
able word with reservations or even criticising usage may be preferable to
omission. If a word does not appear, the user may attribute the exclusion to

on 14 February 2018
oversight or to the fact that the dictionary has not been sufficiently updated,
and therefore decide that the word may still be acceptable, which is exactly
what the compiler might have tried to avoid by leaving it out.
However, the intense debate and ample literature on the choice between
descriptivism and prescriptivism seems not to have reached bilingual lexicog-
raphy. It is only in passing that scholars refer to what the lexicographers’
attitude towards borrowings should be, probably because, as Whitcut (1985)
quite interestingly points out, the needs of the bilingual dictionary user are
different from those of the native speaker, and what matters to the latter
may not necessarily be helpful, for instance, to the learner.2 Still, some occa-
sional references can be found, such as those by Yong and Peng (2007: 116),
who justify prescriptivism as a sine qua non. However, their argument is that
non-native learners are taught the standard variety of language and are not
given access to ‘informal or non-standard varieties’. Nevertheless, the question
then may be what happens when the lexical items in question are standard from
the point of view of the native users, but not from that of the normative
authorities of a country.
To these issues we might add the cultural differences between countries or
societies as regards the role and the power of ‘prescriptivism’, or in other
words, the strength an authority may have in setting the norm for a language.
This has very important implications when comparing, for instance,
English-speaking with Spanish-speaking cultures. While in the former the au-
thority for prescriptive usage is not very clear and there are various and chang-
ing referents (the OED, the American Heritage Dictionary, Fowler’s A
Dictionary of English Usage, etc.), in Spain one single institution with royal
patronage, the Real Academia, has succeeded for over 200 years in setting the
norms for formal usage, and ultimately decides what is correct or not in terms
of grammar, spelling, syntax or vocabulary. Therefore, and although the
DRAE does not aim to include technical words from specialized domains,
any Spanish monolingual or bilingual dictionary (especially if published or
sold in Spain) must be aware of the Academia’s attitude towards certain bor-
rowings. Indeed, technical words which are frequent in general language have
been explicitly rejected by this institution, even though their usage is
well-documented.
Considering this, in bilingual dictionaries a number of approaches can be
found, even within the same work. This can be illustrated by the case of con-
sulting, a false Anglicism used in Spanish for the English consultancy. Though
the word has not been accepted by the Spanish Real Academia, it receives
different treatment in some Spanish-English bilingual dictionaries, ranging
from full inclusion to asymmetric treatment or even omission. Thus, at times
lexicographers adopt a restrictive view, like that taken by the Gran Diccionario
Larousse (2000 [1993]), which does not list consulting, either as an entry in
Spanish or as a possible equivalent of the English consultancy in the

on 14 February 2018
286 Isabel Balteiro
English-Spanish section. In other cases, the item is listed with no additional

remark, as has been done by the Oxford Spanish Dictionary (in its 1994 edi-
tion), which offers consulting as one of the potential equivalents of consultancy,
alongside asesorıá and consultorıá in the English-Spanish section, and consul-
ting as an entry in the Spanish-English section (although it refers to the more
‘acceptable form’ consultorıá). Finally, there are works in which some apparent
inconsistencies can be found, as in Collins (2003), which has an entry in the
Spanish-English section for consulting, but does not mention it as a possible
equivalent for consultancy in the English-Spanish section. These inconsisten-
cies, as will be seen later, may be due to oversight, but most probably are based
on a specific strategy depending on the purpose for which the dictionary is
intended.
The case of consulting might then be an interesting example in favour of
dictionaries recording some Anglicisms. The lexicographer might decide that
there is no point in including an English word in a Spanish-English section
because it is (apparently) transparent (a decision which might be influenced,
amongst other factors, by the compiler’s native language). However, a descrip-
tive lexicographer might consider it important to say that the countable, con-
crete meaning of consulting in Spanish in no way corresponds to its use in
English (which would refer to the activity, and never to the firm). In addition
to this, languages with grammatical gender, such as German or Spanish, might
require the inclusion of borrowings in dictionaries, even if they have not been
accepted by prescriptive bodies or purists, if only to indicate the gender attrib-
uted to the word in the host language (in Spanish web, for instance, is feminine,
but there is some hesitation concerning the gender of Internet).
Another important issue when choosing between a descriptive or a prescrip-
tive approach concerns the very purpose of the dictionary itself, that is,
whether it is to be used for decoding or encoding purposes, or for translation
to or from a foreign language (see, for example, Bergenholtz and Tarp 1995:
23–24), or, for commercial reasons, if it is possible that it should have both
purposes. If it is used for decoding, it makes sense, especially for the non-native
speaker, to incorporate frequently occurring items in order to allow under-
standing of specialized texts. However, if it is used from the productive side
(for encoding or translation into a foreign language), one might always under-
stand that, given two options, the drafter should be informed of which one
would receive general approval and which one might be frowned upon by
purists. But, obviously, there is a double limitation here. On the one hand,
this would apply only to those instances in which the ‘correct’ form has become
so unusual, or even incorrect, that its usage would result in non-acceptability
(which, in turn, would take us to what is meant by ‘correct’ in 21st century
linguistics). On the other hand, as will be seen in the following section, the
distinction between receptive and productive lexicographic tools, which for
some authors (e.g. Yong and Peng 2007: 199) would be logical in some

on 14 February 2018
bilingual works, does not seem to apply to specialized bilingual dictionaries. In

other words, although the difference between production and reception may
very well be understandable in theory, most bilingual dictionaries eventually
fulfil (or try to fulfil) both roles (Hannay 2003: 149).
It is also to be borne in mind that translators sometimes do not seek infor-
mation, but ‘reassurance’, as described by Varantola (1998: 188), and ‘they do
not like to find equivalents which they do not recognise.’ In this respect, pre-
scriptivism may take two forms: either the undesired item is completely
excluded, or it is mentioned as a separate headword or within the correct
entry, and then disparaged. However, for some authors there is a difference
in this strategy, since raising an item to the status of headword might be taken
as some type of acceptance (Van Sterkenburg 2003: 7).
4. Prescriptivist and descriptivist approaches to Anglicisms in specialized

English-Spanish dictionaries
When moving into the realm of specialized dictionaries, prescriptivism takes on

further nuances. The decision on whether to include an element (whether for-
eign or native) in a specialized dictionary is a very important one, especially
since, as Opitz (1988: 524) remarked, lexicography may be outpaced by lan-
guage usage, and there is the danger that a lack of updating, or excessive
reticence in the face of new terms or meanings, may disappoint users when
they do not find the word that they seek. As pointed out earlier, some lexicog-
raphers feel it is precisely in the bilingual dictionary where the fight against
borrowings is fought. This is even more frequent in specialized lexicography,
where some languages (English, mostly) have such great power that they may
influence others. This sometimes leads lexicographers, even when trying to be
prescriptive, to mention the undesired word, because they consider that the
dictionary is the ideal place to check the advance of Anglicisms. See, for in-
stance, what Campos (2008: 19) says, in order to fight against the expanding
use of ataque for terrorist attacks in Spanish:
attack v/n: GENERAL atacar; atentado; ataque; al igual que su casi sinónimo
aggression, puede utilizarse en su sentido fı´sico, como en The journalists
were attacked by armed men, o metafóricamente, como en Impunity is an
attack against human dignity; cuando se trata de terrorismo equivale a
«atentado» y no a «ataque», que es un Anglicismo; V. assault, raid,
strike2; attempt. (our emphasis).
Unlike this, an example of a non-prescriptive approach to specialized vo-

cabulary might be, for example, that used by some specialized monolingual (or
bilingualized) Spanish dictionaries which claim to be based on actual usage.
For example, Diccionario empresarial Stanford (1990: 165) lists the Anglicism

on 14 February 2018
288 Isabel Balteiro
diagnóstico as ‘Calificación, opinión experta que se da de una situación tras

haberla estudiado a fondo’ (‘expert opinion about a situation resulting from
in-depth study’), a standard meaning in Spanish which is not accepted by the
Real Academia (which still restricts the word to medical contexts). In special-
ized lexicography the prescriptive component may appeal unequally to differ-
ent users. For translators, prescription may be acceptable, or at least, they may
pay attention to it. However, for some specialists this type of remark may be
unwelcome or unnecessary and at times the expert might not be prepared to
admit proposals from linguists. This is sometimes perceived when attempting
to use a dictionary as a source of authority with specialized addressees. For
instance, in a medical conference one can witness interpreters trying to trans-
late auricular flutter into Spanish as ‘aleteo auricular’ or craving as ‘ansia’, only
to hear physicians in another paper in Spanish mention ‘tratamiento del flutter
auricular’ or ‘sı́ntomas del craving’.
One possible solution is that dictionaries bearing translators (but also busi-
ness people, scientists, etc.) in mind might be both prescriptive and descriptive.
On the one hand, prescriptivism would be helpful in order to advise these or
other users on what they should not say in a given context, or warning trans-
lators that speakers over a certain age might refuse a particular form, or that a
specific type of speaker might prefer an allegedly incorrect item over the correct
one, or the foreign element rather than the corresponding equivalent in L2. On
the other hand, following the same idea, a certain degree of ‘descriptive pre-
scriptivism’ might warn translators about words which they might encounter in
a given text that, in principle, would be rejected by some users but be com-
pletely acceptable for others. This idea, which is similar to what Norman (2002)
proposes (dictionaries being descriptive to aid decoding and prescriptive to aid
production) might contribute to the choice of a correct equivalent in the target
language (for example, in order to avoid false borrowings), or even, in cases
where translators are asked to revise an existent text by a specialized user,
would prevent them from striking out a form which is perfectly admissible
and replacing it by something which, albeit correct, might be alien to the es-
tablished usage among the target language community.
Take, for instance, the difference between the English arrest and the Spanish
arrestar, or between national in English and nacional in Spanish. A purely
prescriptive approach would point out that it is wrong, or even an unacceptable
Anglicism (reflecting Peninsular Spanish usage), to use arrestar in Spanish with
the meaning of ‘arrest’, or nacional as a noun (‘citizen’). However, this would
be not only offensive to many Latin American countries where arrestar is
found in legal contexts with that meaning, but also contrary to established
definitions in the Spanish versions (not translations) of international treaties
or EU directives, which use nacionales de terceros paı´ses (‘nationals of third
countries’) or orden de arresto (‘arrest warrant’). This is why some dictionaries
(Campos 2008: 254, 317), while commenting on the difference, mention the

on 14 February 2018
Anglicisms and supply users with information which they can consider as a
criterion to decide on the most suitable option:
detener (LAW/TORTURE arrest; the word arrestar is also used in Latin America,
in international documents, and increasingly by the Spanish med-
ia) . . . (our emphasis)
nacional (GENERAL national; the word can be used as an adjective, as in La

economıá nacional depende de las remesas de los inmigrantes, but also,
increasingly, as a noun, meaning «citizen», as in Los nacionales de
terceros paı´ses necesitan visado; purists would prefer ciudadano in this
context; S. internacional, multinacional; territorial, extranjero)
. . . (our emphasis)
5. A case study: Anglicisms and false Anglicisms in the Ariel dictionary series
5.1 Introduction
As will be explained in section 5.2 below, in order to study the treatment of

Anglicisms in a specialized English-Spanish dictionary series, we have made a
restrictive selection of thirty-four English words or expressions commonly used
in business and legal Spanish (see Appendix A) and then examined how they
have been dealt with in the best-known representatives of the Ariel dictionary
series: the Diccionario de te´rminos jurı´dicos (A Dictionary of Legal Terms), 10th
edition (hereinafter, DTJ10) and the Diccionario de te´rminos económicos, finan-
cieros y comerciales (A Dictionary of Economic, Financial and Commercial
Terms), 5th edition (DTEFC5).
At this point, some brief remarks should be made about these dictionaries,
which to some extent have represented a revolution in contemporary bilingual
lexicography in Spain, and which at times combine prescriptivism with descrip-
tivism. These publications are part of a general series, all compiled under the
supervision of the same expert (the late Dr Enrique Alcaraz), which includes
other lexicographic resources dealing with various areas of law, such as human
rights (Campos 2008), real estate (Campos 2003), or business, such as insurance
(Castro Calvı́n 2003), securities (Mateo Martı́nez 2003), and banking (Mateo
Martı́nez 2009), amongst others. These works attempt a compromise between
lexicography and language learning, showing what Opitz (1988: 518) terms a
‘retreat’ from the apparently ‘unnatural’ structure of the dictionary, which tries
to favour language learning by giving up its conventional structure. The ap-
proach, which would be one step beyond what Stark (1999) or Crowther (1999)
call ‘encyclopedic learners’ dictionaries’, combines semi-encyclopedic, usage
and learners’ dictionaries, as can be observed in the encyclopedic or encyclo-
pedized examples below, and comes close to the bidirectional specialized tool

on 14 February 2018
290 Isabel Balteiro
which Bergenholtz and Tarp (1995: 54) had looked forward to. See, for in-
stance, a typical entry in a dictionary of the same series (Campos 2008: 36):
collective bargaining (REL LAB negociación colectiva; es la que mantienen los

patronos –employers– y los enlaces sindicales –union representatives–
para determinar los salarios –wages–, las prestaciones –benefits–,
etc.; aunque no está definida –listed– como derecho humano básico,
suele gozar de protección –it is usually protected– en la mayorıá de
las democracias liberales –liberal democracies–; V. trade union) . . .
This is a special case of what is usually considered a ‘bilingualized’ monolingual

dictionary (cf. Fuertes and Velasco 2001), or rather, in our opinion, a ‘mono-
lingualized’ bilingual one, with two differences:
(1) while the basis would be a monolingual headword and definition, what is
added is not a simple translation into L2, but a translation of key con-
cepts in the whole definition;
(2) unlike other publications, in which the definition and explanation is
meant to help users understand even what the native language word
means (cf. Kaalep and Mikk 2008: 371), or perhaps to help non-experts
to understand the notions (Bowker 2003: 157), here the information given
is meant to expand users’ productive ability in L2 for special purposes by
introducing related items which they might need in specialized
communication.
5.2 Methodology
We have carried out an extremely restrictive selection of items for our sample.
From the whole list of entries in the English-Spanish section of the DTJ10 and
DTEFC5, we selected those elements for which there was an ‘opportunity’ for
an Anglicism, that is, those English words which are also used in Spanish.3
Since the point was to choose Anglicisms which are genuinely and unquestion-
ably found in two subject domains, namely, business and law, relevant to the
object of our study (their inclusion in a specialized dictionary), the following
have been excluded:
(1) those cases where the original English item does not appear in any of the
two dictionaries chosen. The reason is that our purpose is specifically to
analyse the way Anglicisms in Spanish are dealt with. It would be of little
use, therefore, to include in our figures an English word occurring as in
Spanish (e.g. dink, as in el fenómeno dink, ‘the dink phenomenon’), but
not appearing in the English-Spanish section, since we would have to

on 14 February 2018
hypothesize whether, had it been included, the Spanish Anglicism would

have been listed among its potential equivalents;
(2) cases in which the English word is used in general Spanish, and not
exclusively in the business and legal domains, as in casting or happening.
Although casting vote is a frequent expression in business meetings in
English, in Spanish casting is only found in cinema or drama circles (as
in Me he presentado a un casting, ‘I have auditioned for a play’), or
happening, which in Spanish is restricted to arts (Organizar un happening,
‘Stage an art happening’);
(3) Anglicisms fully accepted and adapted into Spanish, involving Real
Academia recognition, and adaptation to Spanish spelling rules, such as
lı´der (‘leader’) or mı´tin (‘meeting’). Therefore, the items in our sample are
those containing word beginnings or endings (sp-, -ing), consonant clus-
ters (-sw-, -nn-) or similar features not found in Spanish spelling.
However, in the case of the English word boycott, the Spanish option
boicot has been included in the sample in its partially adapted form (be-
cause -y- has changed to -i-, but the -t ending, a very unusual occurrence
in Spanish, has been preserved), but not boicoteo, which is a full adap-
tation and might even be taken for an originally Spanish word.
(4) items which might be attributed to fads, stylistic licence or occasional
usage. Given the fact that Spanish business texts may be at times exces-
sively fond of using Anglicisms which sometimes may later disappear,4
the additional requirement was that they should not belong exclusively to
business contexts, that is, that these items should belong to both business
and legal domains. This was done in two ways: first, the English word
had to appear in both the legal and business dictionaries studied, legal
language being, in principle, less likely to contain occasional Anglicisms.
As a result, items not shown in the DTJ10 were discarded, like spread or
timing. Also, for the same reason, in order to confirm the relevance of
each unit, a search was performed to make sure that the English word
had been documented in legal texts in Peninsular Spanish (legal texts
being selected, as above, so as to limit the list of items to the most
frequent ones). We are aware that this criterion leaves out some very
common Anglicisms in business Spanish, such as briefing, clearing or
trading, but it leads to a final selection of completely unquestionable
English borrowings in Spanish, which might be worthy of inclusion in
a dictionary.
This latter check constituted an initial difficulty, due to the lack of corpora in
Spanish which were suitable for this purpose. The most famous ones, the
CREA (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual) and the CDE (Corpus del
Español) proved insufficient for this task. The CREA, according to its own
description, only contains seven books related to Law, which constitutes an

on 14 February 2018
292 Isabel Balteiro
enormous limitation regarding this subject matter, and the CDE does not con-
tain any data from the 21st century, which means recent usage may not be
portrayed. Therefore, it was decided to supplement the search via the
Internet, trying to find at least one reliable sample of use within Spanish
court decisions or normative instruments. In this case, reliability was associated
with the source (a decision by a Spanish court may become a precedent). The
final sample, which – due to the extremely restrictive criteria we applied – was
deemed to be a genuine collection of common Anglicisms in business and legal
Spanish, can be found in Appendix A.
The Anglicisms selected were then analysed, considering the following
points:
(1) if the dictionaries were purely prescriptive or descriptive and included the
potential loanwords;
(2) if the English item and the Spanish Anglicism coincided in meaning or
usage; and
(3) if the dictionaries offered any remarks concerning the acceptability of the
item in Spanish and potential asymmetries between the two languages.
In what follows, the results of this analysis are shown, and also, where ap-
plicable, cross-references between the data are given.
5.3 Inclusion of Anglicisms in the specialized bilingual dictionaries studied: a prescriptivist

approach
This section examines whether the dictionaries selected for the purposes of this
study contain the Anglicisms whose presence has been verified in specialized
Spanish texts. For such purpose, we shall first comment on the cases where the
existence of the English form is acknowledged in Spanish (either as a pure or
false Anglicism), and then make some remarks on those loanwords whose
existence has not been mentioned in these dictionaries, including those which
might entail meaning or usage problems.
‘Inclusion’ here will be understood as either:
- the Anglicism is listed as one of the potential Spanish equivalents in the

English-Spanish section:
stock1 n/v: existencias, reservas, almaceń, mercancıás en almaceń, “stock”;

acopiar, almacenar, aprovisionar . . . . . .
- the Anglicism appears as a headword in the Spanish-English section:
stock n: stock1; S. existencias. [Exp: stock amortiguador (buffer stock; S.

fondo de regulación)].

on 14 February 2018
Table 1: Anglicisms (from the 34-item sample) included in the DTJ10,

DTEFC5 and DRAE
number %
DTJ10, English-Spanish section 4 11.7%

DTJ10, Spanish-English section 1 2.9%
DTEFC5, English-Spanish section 11 32.2%
DTEFC5, Spanish-English section 5 14.7%
DRAE 15 44.1%
Out of the thirty-four items selected, the English-Spanish section of the

DTJ10 mentions, within its translation options, only four items (11.7%), char-
ter, consulting, dumping and marketing, but accepts only marketing as a head-
word in the Spanish section. The definitions and explanations in the
English-Spanish section of the DTEFC5 include eleven items (32.2%): charter,
consulting, dumping, factoring, leasing, lobby, marketing, merchandising, roy-
alty, swap and stock, but only boicot, broker, marketing, swap and stock are
deemed worthy of an entry in Spanish (see Appendix B for the specific items
accepted).
An analysis of the data shows that:
(1) in general, there is a greater likelihood that the Anglicism will be recog-
nized in the economic rather than in the legal dictionary. In fact, loan-
words are recognised almost three times as much in the English-Spanish
section (32.2% vs. 11.7%), and five times as much in the Spanish-English
section (14.7% vs. 2.9%);
(2) the recognition is much greater in the English-Spanish section than in the
Spanish-English one. The extreme case is that of the DTJ10, where the
Spanish-English section only contains one of the words studied as a
headword (marketing) and leaves out words perfectly accepted by the
DRAE, such as trust or lobby, whereas the DTEFC5 accepts also
boicot, broker, spot and swap.
Apparently, for a prescriptivist approach, inclusion in the Spanish-English

section would be a badge of approval for the borrowing, which the lexicog-
rapher does not seem prepared to give.
It might be interesting here, in order to measure the degree of prescriptivism
of these two specialized dictionaries, to compare the number of Anglicisms in
the sample included with the treatment of such Anglicisms by the DRAE (see
Appendix B).

on 14 February 2018
294 Isabel Balteiro
Table 2: Anglicisms in the sample accepted by the DRAE
number %
Accepted
Accepted with no 2 5.8%
additional remarks
Accepted with 9 26.4% 14.7% of these, i.e.
remark ‘voz inglesa’ 5 items, proposed
Accepted, but referring 4 11.7% for elimination in
to another word future DRAE editions
Sub-total 15 44.1%
Not accepted 19 55.8%
Total in sample 34 100%
Out of the list of the thirty-four Anglicisms we selected, all of which are used
in legal and business contexts, the DRAE includes fifteen (44.1%). In this case,
there are three possibilities:
(1) full acceptance with no additional remark (other than the etymological
origin), as in charter or trust (5.8%);
(2) acceptance with the remark ‘voz inglesa’ (‘English word’), as in catering,
dumping, leasing, lobby, overbooking, ranking, spot, standing and stock
(26.4%); and
(3) referral to what is considered the more acceptable word (11.7%), as in
boicot (the DRAE prefers boicoteo), copyright (the DRAE refers to dere-
chos de autor), marketing (the DRAE prefers mercadotecnia) and sponsor
(the DRAE recommends patrocinador). Interestingly enough, from the
latter two categories, overbooking, spot, sponsor, standing and stock
(14.7% of the items) are ‘proposed for elimination’ in further editions
of the dictionary.
It must be noted that, if we compare the bilingual dictionaries analysed with

the DRAE, it appears that even the most permissive of these specialized dic-
tionaries is more restrictive (regarding these Anglicisms) than the Spanish pre-
scriptive authority par excellence, the Real Academia, which accepts fifteen of
the words in Spanish. However, this extreme caution, leading the DTEFC5 to
exclude perfectly approved Anglicisms, does not mean that it does not accept
them at all. A random look at one single page (p. 1341) shows spread, stock and
straddle almost consecutively as Spanish equivalents to their English counter-
parts. It seems, nevertheless, that often the criterion is not frequency of the item
in Spanish, but the non-existence of an alternative equivalent: the DTEFC5

on 14 February 2018
accepts straddle, for which there is no fixed translation, but will not list sponsor
as a possible Spanish word, even though the Academia accepts it, since the
favoured option is patrocinador. It is also worth mentioning that, in general, if
the item appears as a headword in Spanish one would also expect it to be listed
among the potential translation options in the English-Spanish section.
However, there are two Anglicisms, boicot and broker, which appear as head-
words in Spanish, but the English-Spanish section translates boycott as boicoteo
and does not include broker as one of the options in Spanish for the English
counterpart. In these cases, it seems as if the lexicographer does not recom-
mend that the translator (or specialist) use the Anglicism, but is nevertheless
prepared to warn Spanish-English translators of the existence of the undesired
item.
Most of the items mentioned have the same meaning in Spanish as in English
(they are true Anglicisms), and the only consequence of their non-inclusion is
that users are given an incomplete picture of the lexis of economics and busi-
ness in Spanish. However, the non-inclusion of false Anglicisms resulting from
an excessively prescriptivist approach (more even than that of DRAE, as
observed) may have a number of consequences, at times some paradoxical
ones. As we will see below, users may not only resort to an undesirable bor-
rowing because they have not been warned against it, but even employ an
English word inaccurately as a result of not being given information on the
differences in meaning or usage.
5.4 Differences in meaning or usage between the English item and the false Anglicism:
describing items within a prescriptivist approach in the Ariel dictionary series
Where the English item has a parallel Anglicism in Spanish, we have checked if
there is any difference in meaning or usage between the English and the
Spanish word, and, if such difference is explained in the dictionaries, in a
descriptive manner (see section 5.5. below).
For a start, in our sample we have found twenty-six cases (76.4%) in which
the usage or meaning of the English word did not differ from that of the
Anglicism in Spanish, compared to eight examples (catering, consulting, factor-
ing, leasing, mobbing, outlet, planning and renting) whose usage or meaning
differed between English and Spanish, as seen in Table 3. Within these
Table 3: Anglicisms in the sample and meaning of the original English word
number %
Same meaning 26 76.4%

Different meaning 8 23.5%

on 14 February 2018
296 Isabel Balteiro
asymmetries, and considering the classification of false Anglicisms we saw

earlier (Furiassi 2003), it has been observed that most of them are cases of
compound ellipsis or shortening or clipping of compounds (catering, consulting
and factoring from ‘catering/consulting/factoring firm’, leasing from financial
leasing, outlet from outlet mall, mobbing from workplace mobbing, and planning
from planning sheet), whereas in one of them, renting, there has been a semantic
shift. As for autonomous creations (another type of false Anglicisms), the
prescriptive attitude of the dictionaries examined makes it extremely difficult
for a ‘non-English’ creation to be recognized, although hard-discount (discount
store in English) would have been a suitable candidate. Finally, regarding hy-
brids, no examples have been found in the dictionaries studied.
In some cases, however, it must be noted that the false Anglicism does not
occur in all uses of the word. For instance, catering and factoring can also
appear in Spanish with their genuine usage. However, it is also possible to
find those items as countable nouns in Spanish, through ellipsis or shortening
(Vamos a contratar un factoring, ‘We are going to hire a factoring firm’;
Trabaja en un catering y lo van a despedir, ‘He works for a catering firm and
he is going to be fired’). The following section will show how some of these
difficulties have been dealt with by the dictionaries analysed.
5.5 Presence of descriptive or prescriptive information on semantic asymmetries in the

dictionaries studied
Given the asymmetries commented on earlier, in this section we shall now

check whether the dictionaries, either in their English-Spanish or in their
Spanish-English section, contain any descriptive or prescriptive information
on such usage, addressed to translators or language learners.
As can be seen in Table 4, there are three possibilities where there is asym-
metry between English and Spanish:
(1) information on the asymmetry is provided,

(2) no mention is made of the asymmetry but the wrong meaning is not
included, and
(3) no mention is made of the asymmetry and the dictionary supplies mis-
leading information.
Probably the most ‘desirable’ would be the first one, that is, the dictionary is
aware of the existence of the false Anglicism in Spanish, and warns about the
difference, as in:
consult v: consultar, celebrar consultas; asesorarse, tener en cuenta, considerar.

[Exp: consultancy (asesorıá, consultorıá, «consulting»; sesión de ase-
soramiento; el te´rmino consulting, utilizado en español, es un falso

on 14 February 2018
Table 4: Asymmetric (false) Anglicisms and information provided by the

DTJ10 and the DTEFC5
DTJ10 % DTEFC5 %
Cases with no asymmetry 26 76.4% 26 76.4%

Cases with asymmetry
Information provided on 1 2.9% 1 2.9%
asymmetry
No mention made of 4 11.7% 1 2.9%
asymmetry (but
‘wrong’ meaning not
included)
No mention of 3 8.8% 6 17.6%
asymmetry, and
dictionary supplies
wrong definition
or equivalent
Subtotal 8 23.5% 8 23.5%
Total in sample 34 100% 34 100%
Anglicismo, ya que en ingle´s se emplea, en su lugar, consultancy), con-

sultant (asesor, consejero, consultor; V. adviser, advisor, management
consultant), consultation (asesoramiento; V. mutual consultation), con-
sulting (V. consultancy), consulting board (junta consultiva), consulting
solicitors (letrados asesores)].
However, such an ‘ideal’ situation can only be found in consulting. In other

cases
(1) the Spanish false Anglicism is not mentioned and, therefore, the users are
not informed (neither prescriptively nor descriptively); or
(2) in addition to the Spanish false Anglicism not being mentioned, the def-
inition of the English word in the English-Spanish section is inaccurate: it
corresponds to the Spanish false Anglicism, and not to the English word,
whereby the users are not only ‘not informed’, but ‘confirmed in their
mistake’, as in the case of holding.
5.5.1 No mention offalse Anglicism. In cases such as factoring, outlet, planning and
renting, the DTJ10 does not mention that there is at least one usage in Spanish
which might be labelled as a false Anglicism, and does not include the wrong

on 14 February 2018
298 Isabel Balteiro
meaning. Nevertheless, this may be due to the fact that the DTJ10 does not list
all the meanings. This is proven by the fact that the DTEFC5, which contains a
wider range of items, only does this once, and rather suffers from the third
situation, whereby the English word is defined or translated with the Spanish
meaning, as we shall see below in planning or factoring.
5.5.2 Wrongormisleadingequivalencesordefinitions. Apart from the case of holding

mentioned earlier (which has not been included in the final count, as it does not
appear in the DTJ10), there are instances in which the dictionaries do not
explicitly equate the Spanish false Anglicism with the English item, but the
English-Spanish lemma contains an explanation or definition that suggests
otherwise. For example, in the English-Spanish section of the DTEFC5, leasing
is defined as ‘arrendamiento de un bien o activo con opción de compra a su
vencimiento por un valor residual (‘lease of a property or asset, with a purchase
option at the end for a residual value’)’ and thus directly equated with the
Spanish leasing, a definition which does not correspond to English usage
(which would prefer finance, financial lease or leasing). In the case of the
English planning, although it is not explicitly given as an equivalent to the
Spanish planning, it is translated (rightly) as ‘planeamiento, planificación, orga-
nización’, but also as ‘planigrama’, for which in English the correct form would
be planning sheet, not ‘planning’. Both are false Anglicisms because planning
and leasing have this meaning in Spanish.
In general, there is a consistent pattern in false Anglicisms in which, through
ellipsis or shortening, the English word refers to the process and in Spanish
refers to the service provider, to the place where the service is rendered, or the
concrete (usually countable) result of the process. Such would be the case of the
Spanish camping or parking (which are indeed mentioned in bilingual diction-
aries, such as the OSD), or, for our purposes, planning, which in English refers
to the process while in Spanish may also describe the process (as in No hubo
suficiente planning, ‘There was not enough planning’), but most frequently, the
result, as in He visto tu nombre en el planning (‘I have seen your name in the
planning sheet’). By not including these false Anglicisms, the user may assume
that they are correct, genuine English words.
Another two instances of false Anglicisms in the DTEFC5 are catering and
factoring. In Spanish, the former, as pointed out by Rodrı́guez and Lillo (1997:
117), may refer to a place or a firm, which is probably the reason why the
DTEFC5 translates it into Spanish as ‘empresas/servicio de restauración social
y de colectividades’ (‘firm/service providing catering to institutions or groups’),
adding an option which does not exist in English (which would use catering
firm). Finally, as regards factoring, the word in Spanish may refer to the service
(servicio de factoring), which coincides with the English usage, but in Spanish
the noun can be found as a countable item, as in un factoring sin recurso

on 14 February 2018
(‘non-recourse factoring’), or even to the type of firm performing the service.

The English headword is translated by the DTEFC5 as either ‘compañı́a que
paga en operaciones con empresas extranjeras’ (‘firm making payments in
transactions with foreign firms’) or even directly as factoring. We have been
unable to find such use of factoring documented in English, which means that
learners, based on this dictionary, in this and in the previous cases may be led
to insert these false Anglicisms in English. Here the dictionary has tried to be
descriptive, but has confused the English word with the Spanish false Anglicism
resulting from a compound ellipsis.
6. Conclusions
In this study we have carried out a survey of the way a series of specialized
bilingual dictionaries deals with Anglicisms. Although the conclusions may not
be extrapolated to all dictionaries, and further data may be required (especially
from the so-called ‘hard’ sciences), our findings may suggest that, even though
lexicographic theory does seem to have acknowledged that lexicography is (or
should be) descriptive, this conclusion does not appear to have gained complete
acceptance; this would apply especially to countries such as Spain, with a
strong prescriptive tradition in the native language. Some dictionary-makers
continue to apply restrictive criteria to equivalents or translations, even in cases
where the prescriptive authorities of a given language have accepted a foreign
element, and therefore appear as more prescriptive than the official prescribers
themselves. Sometimes, such excessive zeal, whereby undesired borrowings are
omitted, may even result in the dictionary not having the intended prescriptive
effect. The users may either assume that the word is correct, but simply left out,
or worse still, assume that there is no difference between the original word and
the item as found in the receiving language.
The question remains, therefore, whether specialized lexicography should be
prescriptive, and if so, on whose authority. It is our belief that
descriptively-oriented dictionaries should still attempt to distinguish those
uses which enjoy official approval (by prescriptive authorities) from those
which, though widely used by the corresponding linguistic community, might
cause problems to non-native users in some circles. However, there remains the
issue of what constitutes ‘official approval’, that is, whether it means accept-
ance by authorities empowered to do so, which would be the case of the
IUPAC in chemistry (Norman 2002: 266), or statute books for legal language.
This latter case is a very clear one: if the Spanish Criminal Code, for instance,
no longer says that desacato (‘contempt of court’) is a crime, then it is not, even
if some dictionaries continue to list it as a crime). In other words, in domains
where there is an unquestionable source of authority, a certain degree of pre-
scriptivism might be seen as reasonable.

on 14 February 2018
300 Isabel Balteiro
In other less codified domains, nevertheless, the issue is more problematic

because, where there is no unquestionable authority, lexicographers sometimes
tend to assume this role and become the prescriptive source themselves, on the
grounds of grammatical or lexical purity or past usage. Remarks such as ‘un-
necessary’, ‘wrong’, etc., if any, might be more welcome if they are made by
specialists, and not by linguists. Another possibility would be for lexicograph-
ers to facilitate decoding by informing users of both possibilities, and always
putting citational evidence before their personal attitudes. Also, a matter which
may be of importance is the fact that, in their discussion of present specialized
usage, lexicographers are not only non-specialists, but also persons who are
influenced, as Landau (1989: 32) points out, by their own education and back-
ground. We might add here that such education took place two or three dec-
ades ago, and therefore their criteria may be based on (or influenced, even at a
subconscious level, by) what was acceptable at that time.
The right balance, in our opinion, might lie in a sort of ‘descriptive prescrip-
tivism’ (cf. Venter 2002), that is, describing actual usage and including add-
itional information on whether a form may be accepted by some and refused by
others. Then, the lexicographer would not decide whether a word or an equiva-
lent is correct; rather, the dictionary would list all possible options and inform
learners or translators that some of them might be more welcome in a given
situation or translation project. An example of this, as we have seen, is the way
some bilingual dictionaries could deal with Anglicisms used in business and
legal contexts, like the ones we have studied here.
In the present analysis, it has been shown that the dictionaries analysed have
not considered some Anglicisms worthy of inclusion, even though the items
selected are amply supported by usage and at times have been accepted by a
prescriptive authority such as the Spanish Real Academia. This may occasion-
ally result in a lack of information in the case of false Anglicisms, and in
general, in an incomplete picture of the specialized vocabulary in one of the
languages. Users (learners or translators) are not told about the existence of
perfectly acceptable Anglicisms in business and legal Spanish, which might lead
them to eliminate forms when proofreading a translation, to choose an unusual
equivalent in the target language or even to falsely assume that the word in L1
means the same in L2 (in the case of false Anglicisms). Regarding this latter
problem, given the progressive status of English as an international lingua
franca, and the potential developments arising from the use of English by
non-native speakers of the language, it is our belief that this area should be
further dealt with in greater depth.
Notes
1 This work has been carried out with funding provided by the Spanish Ministry of
Education, through the 2008–2011 R&D&I National Plan for Human Resources

on 14 February 2018
Mobility (Programa Nacional de Movilidad de Recursos Humanos del Plan Nacional de
I–D+i 2008–2011). Many special thanks are due to my colleague Dr Miguel Ángel
Campos, the anonymous reviewers, and the editor, Dr Bogaards, for their invaluable
comments, as well as to Dr G. Corbett, Dr D. Brown, Dr A. Thornton and
Dr E. Palancar, who have also kindly taken some of their time to read it during my
stay at the University of Surrey. Of course, all the errors that remain are mine.
2 For instance, Seco (1998: 108) makes a number of interesting remarks regarding
ciencia-ficción (‘science fiction’) in Spanish, which according to him should be replaced
by other more genuine forms, such as ficción cientı´fica, narrativa cientı´fica or even
fantaciencia. For an English speaker learning Spanish, the mere equivalence between
ciencia ficción and ‘science fiction’ would suffice, and such proposals might even be
confusing.
3 This study refers to Iberian Spanish; we are aware that other varieties of Spanish
might contain other Anglicisms, but it seemed appropriate to compare with Iberian
Spanish, since the dictionaries studied also concentrate on this variety.
4 A case in point would be an advertisement for an online banking service in Spanish,
which happily describes itself as La banca que hace fresh banking (‘The bank doing fresh
banking’), as shown in Spanish TV networks in 2010.
References
A. Dictionaries
Alcaraz, E. and B. Hughes. 2007. Diccionario de te´rminos jurı´dicos y comerciales ingle´s-
español, Spanish-English. (Tenth edition.) Barcelona: Ariel. (DTJ10).
Alcaraz, E. and B. Hughes. 2008. Diccionario de te´rminos económicos, financieros y
comerciales ingle´s-español, Spanish-English. (Fifth edition.) Barcelona: Ariel.
(DTEFC5).
Campos, M. A. 2003. Diccionario de te´rminos de la propiedad inmobiliaria ingle´s-español,
Spanish-English. Barcelona: Ariel.
Campos, M. A. 2008. Diccionario de te´rminos de derechos humanos ingle´s-español,
Castro Calvı́n, J. 2003. Diccionario de te´rminos de seguros ingle´s-español,
Collins Dictionary español-ingle´s / Ingle´s-Español. 2003. (Seventh edition.) Glasgow:
Harper Collins/Random House.
Cuyás Armengol, A. and A. Cuyás Armengol. 1928. Gran diccionario ingle´s-español.
Barcelona: Sociedad General de Publicaciones.
Diccionario empresarial Stanford español-ingle´s. 1990. Madrid: Expansión/Área
Editorial.
Diccionario Oxford Study para estudiantes de ingle´s. Español-ingle´s/ingle´s-español. 2007.
(Second edition.) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gran diccionario Larousse español-ingle´s/ingle´s-español. 1993, 2000. Barcelona:
Larousse.
Johnson, S. 1755. Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language. (Reprinted 2008.)
2 April 2010. http://www.forgottenbooks.org.
Mateo Martı́nez, J. 2003. Diccionario de te´rminos de la bolsa: ingle´s-español,
Mateo Martı́nez, J. 2009. Diccionario de te´rminos de la banca: ingle´s-español,
Oxford English Dictionary. 10 April 2010. http://www.oed.com/ (OED).

on 14 February 2018
302 Isabel Balteiro
Oxford Spanish Dictionary. 1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (OSD).
Real Academia Española. Banco de datos (Corpus de referencia del español actual).
10 April 2010. http://corpus.rae.es/creanet.html.
Real Academia Española. Diccionario de la Lengua Española. (Twenty-second edition.)
10 April 2010. http://www.rae.es/rae.html (DRAE).
Rodrı́guez, F. and A. Lillo. 1997. Nuevo diccionario de Anglicismos. Madrid: Gredos.
Seco, M. 1998. Diccionario de dudas y dificultades de la lengua española. (Tenth edition.)
Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Webster’s Online Dictionary. 29 September 2010. http://www.websters-online-
dictionary.com.
B. Other literature
Alvar Ezquerra, M. 2003. ‘Dictionaries of Spanish in their Historical Context’.
In R. R. K. Hartmann (ed.), Lexicography: Critical Concepts. London and New
York: Routledge, 343–374.
Benson, M., E. Benson and R. Ilson. 1986. Lexicographic Description of English.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bergenholtz, H. and S. Tarp, (eds) 1995. Manual of Specialized Lexicography: The
Preparation of Specialized Dictionaries. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Bowker, L. 2003. ‘Specialized Lexicography and Specialized Dictionaries’. In P. van
Sterkenburg (ed.), A Practical Guide to Lexicography. Amsterdam and
Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 154–164.
Byrne, J. 2007. ‘Caveat Translator: Understanding the Legal Consequences of Errors in
Professional Translations’. JoSTrans, 7: 2–24.
Crowther, J. 1999. ‘Encyclopaedic Learners’ Dictionaries’. In T. Herbst and K. Popp
(eds), The perfect learners’ dictionary(?). (Lexicographica Series Maior 95.) Tübingen:
Max Niemeyer Verlag, 213–220.
Dı́az Rojo, J. A. 2002. ‘Privacidad: ¿neologismo o barbarismo?’ Espećulo. 21. 30 March
2010. http://www.ucm.es/info/especulo/numero21/privaci.html.
Domı́nguez Mejı́as, E. 2002. ‘Los Anglicismos en el Diccionario de la RAE (2001)’
Panace@, 3.8: 28–33.
Filipović, R. 1995. ‘Some Problems in Compiling an Etymological Dictionary of
Anglicisms’. In W. Winter (ed.), On Languages and Language: the Presidential
Addresses of the (1991) Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, 127–144.
Fuertes, P. A. and M. Velasco. 2001. ‘A Critical Comparison of the Macrostructure and
Microstructure of Two Bilingual English-Spanish Dictionaries of Economics’.
International Journal of Lexicography, 14.1: 31–55.
Furiassi, C. 2003. ‘False Anglicisms in Italian Monolingual Dictionaries: A Case Study
of Some Electronic Editions’. International Journal of Lexicography, 16.2: 121–142.
Furiassi, C. 2006. ‘Translating American and British trademarks into Italian. Are bilin-
gual dictionaries an aid to the user?’. In F. San Vicente (ed.), Lessicografia bilingue e
traduzione: metodi, strumenti, approcci attuali. Monza: Polimetrica, 199–213.
Furiassi, C. 2010. False Anglicisms in Italian. Monza: Polimetrica.
Gimeno, F. and M. V. Gimeno. 2003. El desplazamiento lingüı´stico del español por el
ingle´s. Madrid: Cátedra.
Görlach, M. (ed.) 2001. A Dictionary of European Anglicisms. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

on 14 February 2018
Hannay, M. 2003. ‘Types of bilingual dictionaries’. In P. van Sterkenburg (ed.), A
Practical Guide to Lexicography. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins,
145–153.
Heath, J. 1994. ‘Borrowing’. In R. E. Asher and J. M. Y. Simpson (eds), The
Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Vol. I. 383–394.
Kaalep, H. J. and J. Mikk. 2008. ‘Creating Specialized Dictionaries for Foreign
Language Learners: A Case Study’ International Journal of Lexicography, 21.4:
369–394.
Landau, S. I. 1989. Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography. (First edition 1989,
second edition 2001.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lorenzo, E. 1996. Anglicismos hispánicos. Madrid: Gredos.
Norman, G. 2002. ‘Description and Prescription in Dictionaries of Scientific Terms’.
International Journal of Lexicography, 15.4: 259–276.
Onysko, A. 2007. Anglicisms in German: Borrowing, Lexical Productivity, and Written
Codeswitching. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.
Opitz, K. 1988. ‘Dictionaries in Language Learning: What they can and what they can’t
do’. In K. Hyldgaard-Jensen and A. Zettersten (eds), Symposium on Lexicography III.
Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Lexicography, May 14–16, 1986,
at the University of Copenhagen. (Lexicographica Series Maior 19). Tübingen: Max
Niemeyer Verlag, 517–528.
Piqué-Angordans, J., S. Posteguillo and L. Melcion. 2006. ‘The Development of a
Computer Science Dictionary, or How to Help Translate the Untranslatable’.
In E. Arnó Macià, A. Soler Cervera and C. Rueda Ramos (eds), Information
Technology in Languages for Specific Purposes: Issues and Prospects. New York:
Springer, 213–229.
Pratt, C. 1980. El Anglicismo en el español peninsular contemporáneo. Madrid: Gredos.
Pratt, C. 1997. ‘Anglicisms in the Academy dictionary: “No pasarán” ’ Estudios ingleses
de la Universidad Complutense, 5: 279–295.
Riquelme, J. 1998. Los Anglicismos. Anglismos y Anglicismos: hue´spedes de la lengua.
Alicante: Aguaclara.
Rodrı́guez González, F. 2002. ‘Spanish’. In M. Görlach (ed.), English in Europe. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 128–150.
Rodrı́guez Medina, M. J. 2004. ‘La búsqueda de efectos humorı́sticos, irónicos y paródicos
a través de los Anglicismos’. Estudios de Lingüı´stica Inglesa Aplicada, 5: 105–120.
Spence, N. C. W. 1987. ‘ “Faux amis” and “faux Anglicismes”: Problems of
Classification and Definition’. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 23.2: 169–183.
Stark, M. 1999. Encyclopedic Learners’ Dictionaries. A Study of their Design Features
from the User Perspective. (Lexicographica Series Maior 92.) Tübingen: Max
Niemeyer Verlag.
Svensén, B. 2009. Practical Lexicography: Principles and Methods of Dictionary-making.
(Second Edition.) Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Temmerman, R. 2000. Towards New Ways of Terminology Description: The
Sociocognitive Approach. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Van Sterkenburg, P. 2003. ‘ “The” Dictionary: Definition and History’. In P. van
Sterkenburg (ed.), A Practical Guide to Lexicography. Amsterdam and
Varantola, K. 1998. ‘Translators and their Use of Dictionaries: User Needs and User
Habits’. In B. T. S. Atkins (ed.), Using Dictionaries: Studies of Dictionary Use by
Language Learners and Translators. (Lexicographica Series Maior 88.) Tübingen:
Max Niemeyer Verlag, 179–192.

on 14 February 2018
304 Isabel Balteiro
Venter, M. 2002. ‘ “An Aggravating Situation”: What is “Correct” English?’ English
Academy Review, 19.1: 65–73.
Verkuyl, H., M. Janssen and F. Jansen. 2003. ‘The Codification of Usage by Labels’.
In P. van Sterkenburg (ed.), A Practical Guide to Lexicography. Amsterdam and
Vives Coll, A. 1989–1990. ‘Los Anglicismos económicos en los D.R.A.E. de 1970 y
1984’. Revista de Filologıá de la Universidad de La Laguna, 8.9: 405–411.
Wells, R. A. 1973. Dictionaries and the Authoritarian Tradition: A Study in English Usage
and Lexicography. Paris: Mouton.
Whitcut, J. 1985. ‘Usage Notes in Dictionaries: The Needs of the Learner and the
Native Speaker’. In R. Ilson (ed.), Dictionaries, Lexicography and Language
Learning. Pergamon Press: Oxford.
Yong, H. and J. Peng. 2007. Bilingual Lexicography from a Communicative Perspective.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Appendix A
List of Anglicisms studied
benchmarking lobby royalty

boicot marketing sponsor
broker merchandising spot
catering mobbing swap
charter outlet standing
consulting outsourcing stock
copyright overbooking timesharing
dumping planning trust
factoring pooling vending
hedging ranking warrant
joint venture rating
leasing renting
Appendix B
List of Anglicisms accepted by the DRAE and included in the DTEFC5 and DTJ10
accepted by the RAE:

boicot leasing sponsor
catering lobby spot
charter marketing standing
copyright overbooking stock
dumping ranking trust

on 14 February 2018
accepted by the DTJ10:

charter dumping
consulting marketing
accepted by the DTEFC5:

boicot factoring royalty
broker leasing swap
charter lobby stock
consulting marketing
dumping merchandising

on 14 February 2018

Prescriptivism and Descriptivism in The Treatment of Anglicisms in A Series of Bilingual Spanish-English Dictionaries

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Prescriptivism and Descriptivism in The Treatment of Anglicisms in A Series of Bilingual Spanish-English Dictionaries

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

International Journal of Lexicography, Vol. 24 No. 3, 2011, pp.

Isabel Balteiro: Universidad de Alicante (balteiro@ua.es)

An important decision in dictionary design is the treatment given to borrowings or

Do dictionaries describe what a language is like, or tell us what it should be

# 2011 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions,

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

of Latin, was created as an attempt to stop what was seen as a degradation of

2. Anglicisms in dictionaries as a measure of prescriptivism and descriptivism

A good way to gauge the degree of descriptivism or prescriptivism in a dic-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

The words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

caused widespread discontent among purists, while still not satisfying

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

(1) compound ellipses, where part of an English compound is used in the

Some of these false Anglicisms, though not originally correct in English,

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

holding1 n: GRAL tenencia; V. holding of office. [Exp: holding2 (GRAL, DER

3. Prescriptivist and descriptivist attitudes towards Anglicisms in Spanish-English

As explained in the preceding section, the dilemma between prescriptivism and

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

This latter reason, coupled with the dictionary’s reputation as a conservative

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

English-Spanish section. In other cases, the item is listed with no additional

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

bilingual works, does not seem to apply to specialized bilingual dictionaries. In

4. Prescriptivist and descriptivist approaches to Anglicisms in specialized

When moving into the realm of specialized dictionaries, prescriptivism takes on

Unlike this, an example of a non-prescriptive approach to specialized vo-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

diagnóstico as ‘Calificación, opinión experta que se da de una situación tras

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

nacional (GENERAL national; the word can be used as an adjective, as in La

As will be explained in section 5.2 below, in order to study the treatment of

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

collective bargaining (REL LAB negociación colectiva; es la que mantienen los

This is a special case of what is usually considered a ‘bilingualized’ monolingual

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

hypothesize whether, had it been included, the Spanish Anglicism would

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

5.3 Inclusion of Anglicisms in the specialized bilingual dictionaries studied: a prescriptivist

- the Anglicism is listed as one of the potential Spanish equivalents in the

stock1 n/v: existencias, reservas, almaceń, mercancıás en almaceń, “stock”;

- the Anglicism appears as a headword in the Spanish-English section:

stock n: stock1; S. existencias. [Exp: stock amortiguador (buffer stock; S.

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

Table 1: Anglicisms (from the 34-item sample) included in the DTJ10,

DTJ10, English-Spanish section 4 11.7%

Out of the thirty-four items selected, the English-Spanish section of the

Apparently, for a prescriptivist approach, inclusion in the Spanish-English

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

Table 2: Anglicisms in the sample accepted by the DRAE

It must be noted that, if we compare the bilingual dictionaries analysed with

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

Same meaning 26 76.4%

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/24/3/277/930724

asymmetries, and considering the classification of false Anglicisms we saw

5.5 Presence of descriptive or prescriptive information on semantic asymmetries in the

Given the asymmetries commented on earlier, in this section we shall now

(1) information on the asymmetry is provided,

consult v: consultar, celebrar consultas; asesorarse, tener en cuenta, considerar.