Towards a glossary of Hispanicisms in a corpus of contemporary English romance novels

Abstract

This paper aims to justify the building of a glossary or annotated inventory of all the Hispanicisms used in a corpus of English popular romance fiction novels compiled for research project FFI2014-53962-P. An examination of these texts, which are totally or partially set in a Spanish-speaking area, the Canary Islands, proves their tendency to include Spanish words, phrases and even sentences. In this preliminary work, we will describe the guidelines we are using for the compilation and classification of the Hispanicisms found in 30 novels, published between 1955 and 2004, and will also list the entries to be included in the glossary. The work is conceived as a contribution to the studies on the role of Spanish as a loan-giver language