Foreignization and Englishization in Turkish business naming practices

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of foreignization and Englishization on business naming practices in Turkey. The question that is addressed is in what new ways foreign elements and English lexical items influence the naming of store signs in the language. In previous work, it was argued that there are roughly three main ways in which foreignization and Englishization surface in Turkish business naming. These are (i) foreign signs such as non-English (e.g. German and French) and English signs, (ii) hybrid signs that include a combination of Turkish and English words, and (iii) Englishized Turkish signs that include businesses that adopted artificially created signs using English orthography to represent Turkish phonology (cf. Üstünova et. al 2010, Selvi 2011). Based on new data, I show here that there is a new and creative practice that manifests itself in a different way. This new procedure could be dubbed as consonant gemination since it copies the consonant in the middle of the word and the new word is usually accompanied by an English word. The procedure gives rise to a . The practice has important consequences since it changes both the syllable structure and the pronunciation of the word. Further work will shed light on whether this would give rise to other types of business naming practices and whether it will have a long-term effect in the phonology and spelling of Turkish words.