The language of fashion as Language for Specific Purposes: collecting and analysing a trilingual comparable corpus drawn from the fashion magazines Elle and Vogue

Abstract

This study offers new insights into the contemporary language of fashion, a multifaceted phenomenon whose features can be ascribed to the field of languages for specific purposes, on the one hand, and to the advertising genre, on the other. From among the ways of communicating about fashion, magazines represent the best resource to analyse fashion writing because they deal with a variety of fashion topics and they provide detailed descriptions using a mix of technical and semi technical terminology (Cabré 1999; Sager 1990), which is prototypical of specialized languages, as well as general language words to reach out to the wider audience of fashion publications. Hypotheses This study is based upon the hypothesis that linguistic interference exerts remarkable effects on fashion vocabulary and terminology in specialized publications. Furthermore, dynamism and the ability to exploit linguistic resources characterize the language of fashion as innovative by hypothesising a relationship between fashion genre and creative coinages; therefore, in this study, two types of creative formations were analysed: nonce formations, i.e. new words coined for a single occasion without entering the general vocabulary and ADSs – Attention-Seeking Devices, i.e. playful formations that amuse, preview information, demand the special attention of the reader. Research Design In order to investigate the language used by fashion experts in authentic settings, a corpus retrieved from two of the most authoritative monthly fashion magazines, ELLE and VOGUE, was collected representing a computerised database for analysing three languages, i.e. Italian, French and British English. From this multilingual perspective, significant language processes at play in fashion language such as creativity (Bauer 1983, 2001; Hohenhaus 2007; Lipka 2007; Pitzl 2012; Renouf 2007) and linguistic interference (Furiassi 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015; Furiassi & Gottlieb 2015; Gusmani 1973, 1993, 1998; Lopriore & Furiassi 2015; Pulcini, Furiassi, Rodríguez Gonzàlez, 2012), were investigated. The data extracted from the corpus was used to create a fashion glossary that shed light on the lexical differences among the three languages and suggested practical implications in multilingual lexicography and terminology. Research methods Since the data collected for this study could be analysed by using qualitative and quantitative methods, a mixed method of research was adopted. Consequently, the combination of the lexicological and terminological investigation of fashion lexicon, using the text analysis software TalTac2, and the statistical analysis of quantitative data, using the software Iramuteq, enhanced the effectiveness of this methodology. With regard to the approaches to corpus work, the corpus-based method analysed words and phrases of interest and described the language of fashion, while the corpus-driven method provided linguistic evidence for the statements about the linguistic interference process involved in fashion lexicon and the creative use of language. Findings As far as the results are concerned, the analysis has proven that linguistic interference exerts remarkable effects on the vocabulary and terminology found in fashion publications, with the growing influence of English on Italian and French, thereby confirming its important role both in Europe and worldwide and being the most productive donor language, followed by French and Italian, the latter being the most receptive language with the highest percentage of Anglicisms and Gallicisms. This investigation also revealed that fashion lexicon shows a dichotomy dividing its words into two groups, each of which serves a different communicative function. Casuals and nonce borrowings are used to achieve stylistic effects, and acclimatized loanwords are used “to inform and exchange objective information on a specialized topic” (Cabré 1999:75).