The Impact of English on Other Languages and Linguistic Justice

Abstract

This article explores the implications of English's role as a global lingua franca for other languages, with a particular focus on the transformations these languages undergo due to English influence. Such changes are most evident in the lexical domain, where they are typically examined under the framework of lexical borrowing or Anglicisms. However, they also extend to grammatical, stylistic, and pragmatic levels, affecting formulation structures, argumentation strategies, and behavioural patterns, often without speakers’ conscious awareness. This article aims to highlight that both the growing prevalence of English across diverse domains and the resulting shifts in speakers’ native languages are interconnected manifestations of the same global linguistic development. The observed linguistic changes are the result of an asymmetrical relationship between languages, which raises questions of linguistic justice. The study draws on corpus analyses of the German language, supplemented by data from cross‐linguistic research initiatives, such as the Global Anglicism Database Network project (GLAD, https://www.nhh.no/en/research‐centres/global‐anglicism‐database‐network/ ).