THE COLLECTIVE IMAGINARY OF ROMGLISH IN CYBERSPACE AND FACE-TO-FACE INTERACTIONS

Abstract

The activity of Romanian users in digital spaces oftentimes exhibits a dynamic code containing Romglish (the combination of Romanian and English features), which also reverberates in offline discourses and has an ongoing boomerang effect between offline and online interactions. By means of a survey, this paper investigates the Romanian collective imaginary which is set in the linguistic data. As the Romanian language constitutes a matrix in which English and Globish (a simplified pragmatic form of English) are embedded and they become part of a new dynamic code, destined to be changed at all levels (lexical, morphological, and syntactical), Romanian native speakers’ perception of Romglish is an important dimension. As such, this paper will analyse how individuals perceive their personal use of Romglish online and in face-to-face interactions: the use of the code created, the preferences and mechanisms of linguistic choices and linguistic creativity, the frequency of code-switching and code-mixing both in formal and informal contexts, and the degree of universality of the code used. The findings will provide insight not only specific to the aspects of the Romglish, but also related to the cognitive processes involved and the reasons which trigger such processes.

Keywords

• collective imaginary
• romglish
• globish
• cognitive processes
• online and offline interactions