Attitudes Towards Romglish in Online Discourse

Abstract

"Attitudes towards Romglish in Online Discourse. As English has become a global language, it has also become the language of computer-mediated communication. The online medium has offered the ideal space for English to enter in contact with multiple other languages and, as a result, to contribute to the formation of new varieties. In Romania, this new variety is Romgleză or Romglish, a combination of Romanian and English that is used especially by, but not limited to the younger generations. However, language change does not come easy and, although it has been around for quite a while, Romglish is still considered as improper by some. The present paper analyses two sets of online comments in order to identify attitudes towards Romglish and the language ideologies behind them. To this end, monoglossic ideologies, such as the standard language ideology (Milroy 2001) and the purist ideology (Langer & Davies 2005) will be taken as references when analysing the online comments. The data focuses mainly on two online sources: the Știrile Kanal D Facebook page and an Elforum thread, and it shows that rather than singular and static, language ideologies are multiple and rather fluid, with many online users displaying both monoglossic and heteroglossic ideologies. Keywords: language ideologies, heteroglossic ideologies, monoglossic ideologies, attitudes, Romglish, online discourse "