English Lexical Borrowings in Saudi Arabia:

English Lexical Borrowings by Saudi Male

and Female Students in King Khalid
University

Afnan Nasser Al-shahrani

 Introduction

 Human languages affect each other including effects in phonology, morphology, syntax
and semantics since speakers of any language contact with speakers of other languages.
 Introduction

The reasons behind the use of English lexical borrowings

1) The need to use new expressions for the new objects and concepts
which are not exist in the target language.

2) The attitudes towards languages

 Purpose of research

1) To investigate the reasons behind the use of English lexical

borrowings by Saudi males and females. Specially King Khalid
University Students.
2) To examine the effect of gender on the use of English lexical
borrowings by Saudi University students at King Khalid University.
 Literature review

Walters asserts that English is the language of most scientific communication and that most
.products and trademarks in the world have English names

Bahumaid (2015) finds that most of English loanwords in Hadrami dialect are related to
electric, mechanical and vehicles-related fields

AlBtoush (2014) investigates English loanwords in Jordanian Arabic and he finds that the
majority of participants integrate English loanwords into their speech for reasons like
.prestige, habits, study need and modernity
 Methodology
:Participants
The participants are two groups of Saudi males and females
The sample included 40 males and 40 females ranging in age from 19 to 26 with an average age of
.22

Instruments
:The needed data are collected by two methods
a questionnaire based on that AlBtoush (2014) is administered to the students )1
a picture-naming task )2
 Questionnaire
Do you use English words in place of some Arabic words in your everyday Arabic .1
?Speech
Do you feel prestigious or modern when using English words in your Arabic.2
?speech
?Where do you use English more.3
?Do you use English more when speaking to males, females or both.4
?Do you think that Arabic is able to accommodate technical terms.5
Picture-naming task
Number of lexical
items
7
3
5
4
4
 Discission

:The common reasons indicated by the participants are listed below

.participants indicate that they use these word to mark modernity and prestige )1
.they report that English words have become part of their habits )2
they tell that they don't know their equivalent in Arabic. Particularly, the )3
.technical terms
participants indicate that English borrowings are easier to remember comparing )4
.to their Arabic equivalents
 Discussion

The female students tend to use English words in their daily speech
more than the males:
1) Some of female indicate that they want to look like women belonging to a
high social class
2) females tend to project an image of being different by talking differently
 Conclusion

1) Females seem to use more English words than males

2) This study helps English teachers and English syllable designers to improve
learning and teaching English in Saudi Arabia
 Strengths Weaknesses

1) The title and abstract are clear and 1) Level of English of participants are different

indicate what the research is about.

2) The introduction is short.

2) Methods: the researchers used two

3) The paper has a few spelling mistakes such as
methods prestigue, cocanut and emales

3) Suggestion for future studies was very

4) Repetition, the findings were repeated too
many times in various sections.
specific and helpful.