ETYMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF SPANISH FOOTBALL LEXICON BASED ON PUBLICISTIC DISCOURSE TEXTS

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the etymological analysis of Spanish football vocabulary based on texts of contemporary Spanish-language journalistic discourse. The analysis aims to identify the general peculiarities of formation and functioning of lexical units related to the concept of football. A considerable number of football-related words entered the Spanish language through lexical borrowings from other languages or by means of loan translations (calques), while other lexical items were created using the morphological word-formation resources of Spanish, including affixation and abbreviation. The relevance of this research is determined by the rapid development of the sports sphere, globalization processes, and the interaction of languages, which directly affects linguistic processes in the Spanish language such as renewal and expansion of its lexicon. It should also be noted that football is both the national sport and a distinct sociocultural phenomenon in Spain as well as in the countries of Latin America, with its origins dating back to the late XIX century. Consequently, Spanish-language football discourse has gained considerable popularity and has undergone rapid development in the XX and XXI centuries. The purpose of this article is to conduct an etymological analysis of contemporary Spanish football vocabulary using texts from online periodical publications. The study uses methods of descriptive, etymological and contextual analysis in order to identify the principal tendencies in the formation and usage of football-related lexical units. The article also focuses on establishing the etymological origin of football terms, identifying the sources of their borrowings and the peculiarities of adaptation in the Spanish language. The article also investigates the formation and use of loan translations (calques), international sports abbreviations, and proper Spanish football terms functioning in contemporary football discourse. The results of the study indicate that the etymological analysis of Spanishlanguage football vocabulary is an important tool for investigating the peculiarities of formation and functioning of the football lexicon of the Spanish language.