Anglicisms in German: Language Change or Language Degradation?

This bachelor thesis named "Anglicisms in German: Language Change or Language Degradation?" is concerned with the current language trend of English loan words in German. The theoretical part of the thesis provides a definition of the basic principles and theories concerning the language change with a special focus on the changes in the field of vocabulary as well as of the concepts of Anglicisms and borrowing. The second part focuses on the critical reflexion of Anglicisms among the German public and on the surveys Wort, Unwort and Jugendwort des Jahres. This chapter is also accompanied by a corpus monitoring the occurrence of Anglicisms in the results of these surveys. The practical part of this thesis is represented by the analysis of the occurrence of English loan words in German press from the synchronic point of view. For this purpose, two sources were chosen, namely the quality press represented by the magazine Die Zeit and a tabloid represented by the daily newspaper Bild. The analysis therefore provides a comparison of the frequency of the use of Anglicisms in the quality press and in a tabloid. The results are accompanied by the semantic categorisation of the expressions found and the description of stylistic and sociocultural tendencies following from their usage